


we fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living

by veterization



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Prank Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 21:52:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veterization/pseuds/veterization
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis has been King of Pranks in his dorm for two years, and a random freshman named Harry Styles isn't going to take that title from him. It is on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a quote taken from Stephen King. I take no credit for it or ownership of the lovely boys.
> 
> Oh man, I apologize for the lack of Liam in this story. I have no idea what happened. I hope the attempt at humor makes up for it and it inspires everybody to prank your closest friends and family until they absolutely hate you (◕‿◕✿)

“Zayn, shut the fuck up,” is all Louis’ vocabulary can muster up at this time of night, but all he gets for his efforts is Zayn grunting at him from the bunk under his. “Zayn, what the fuck.”

Zayn doesn’t dignify his demands with answers, nor does he stop banging around making noise at an ungodly hour of the night. Louis has a new class starting at eight in the morning that he’d like to create a first impression in that doesn’t scream _before I moved in I drank my entire dormitory dry of its liquor stash_ and he hardly has the patience for Zayn’s shenanigans at this time of night.

What time is it anyway? Louis rubs the sleep out of his eyes with his palms, fighting the urge to stuff a pillow over his face and resolutely ignore the hullaballoo, but then another thud sounds, like some intoxicated underage freshman is staggering down the halls like Bambi learning to walk. It’s the first fucking week, dammit, and Louis is already missing summer and how he spent hours sleeping in the backyard under the shade of the oak trees without a single ounce of homework stress and ruckuses at sinful hours of the nighttime arousing him from his much needed slumber. He grumbles and stares hard at the alarm clock next to his bunk, blinking the neon green numbers _2:43_ at him like a bright beacon of exactly how too early it is to be making noise.

“ _Zayn_ ,” Louis hisses, groping blindly under his bunk. When nothing but a throaty snore is Zayn’s reply, Louis drapes his torso over the bed so he’s hanging over the railing and staring through the shadows where Zayn’s tangled in his sheets and completely unaware of the commotion that Louis pinpoints to the hall. He rummages around under his comforter until he grabs hold of the socks he forgot to pull off before bed, yanks one off his foot, and tosses it at Zayn’s head. “Zayn!”

“Hnngh,” Zayn replies, and then he’s blinking awake, pupils slowly finding focus on Louis’ upturned head poking in his space. “Wuss going on?”

“Do you hear that?” Louis asks, pointing an accusatory finger at the door. There’s a moment’s silence, where nothing but the sound of faint footsteps padding carefully down the hall wafts through the night, and then the peace is broken by both Zayn and Louis’ alarm clocks loudly screeching awake on their nightstands.

“Fuck,” Zayn moans, burying himself in the sheets so convincingly Louis practically watches the mattress swallow him from reality, while Louis very eloquently tries to free his legs from his sheets and hop to his feet so he can put a stop to the endless Satanic blaring and shrieking from his alarm. He vividly remembers setting it to a soft beep at promptly 7:30, not to mention that Zayn makes a point of never scheduling his alarm and opting for the perpetual “rolled out of bed” look that Louis would find obnoxious in anybody else.

He finally finds the wretched alarm button and smacks it off with the force of somebody who is not fucking around, and he shakes the burrito-shaped lump in the bed that is probably Zayn until he emerges from the sheets to glare.

“What,” Zayn spits out, eyes scrunched tightly closed like the alarms are still piercing his eardrums. Through the thin walls, Louis hears a body tumble onto the floor and throw a litany of curses in the air as more tinny alarms breach the walls. This has all the makings of a dorm-wide practical joke, and Louis is not amused.

“Get up,” Louis demands, continuing to bodily shake Zayn through the sheets until he swats his hands off. “Somebody thinks they’re being funny.”

“God forbid,” Zayn grumbles, but he peels himself from his mattress and combs his fingers through his hair. Louis loves being on holiday and being blissfully professor-less for weeks with nothing but licking melting ice cream off his fingers with his sisters to worry about it, but there is something nice about rooming with Zayn and watching him stumble around in plaid pajama bottoms versus watching him get stuck in Phoebe and Daisy's swing set while getting sweltering sunburns on their noses.

They head to the door together, Louis with an added purpose to his step of catching the culprit red-handed as the sound of echoing alarms throughout the dormitory finally shut off. The door’s ajar, a sliver of yellow light from the hallway slipping in. He reaches for the handle and really, he should have seen it coming.

He yanks the door open, and practically in slow motion, the bucket falls and he’s drenched in frigid water that splashes on top of his head like an ice bath.

Louis’ first reaction is to roar into the night, but then he wipes his eyes dry and pushes his sopping fringe out of his forehead and fumbles aimlessly behind him where he grabs hold of Zayn’s equally soaked shirt. There’s the sound of other doors creaking open and splashes of water cascading on top of heads—people are shouting, cursing as violently as sailors—and just as Louis wiggles his toes on the saturated carpet, he steps out into the madness and sees one lone soul completely dry amid the pandemonium.

“Styles!” a sophomore down the hall yells, and Louis watches as the criminal responsible for disrupting the entire dormitory dutifully salutes the hall. He’s the only one who’s not dripping from head to foot, his curly mop of hair completely unaffected by the abuse of frigid water. He’s smiling, especially as most of the hallway starts bursting into raucous laughter like the water damage to the carpet and the being cruelly woken up in the middle of the night is a humorous story to be retold dozens of times tomorrow morning. Louis is stuck between cursing out the entire hall and being slightly impressed, even if he doesn’t want to be.

“Shit, Harry,” somebody else says, and their teeth are chattering and they still sound thoroughly awed. “That must’ve been the best prank this dorm has ever seen.”

The hall murmurs in agreement, as if they’ve all completely forgotten about all of the sublime pranks Louis has donated his time and effort into for the past few years, and Louis is no longer amused. He squeezes out the base of his night shirt where it gathers at his stomach, shakes off his sopping fingers, and promptly shuts the door to effectively close off all the laughter and praise directed at the freshman who does not deserve the title of biggest hooligan in the dorm when Louis has been working for it for years.

\--

When Louis was a freshman, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to make some damage, he wrangled three live chickens off an off campus farm and successfully sneaked them into the dorm halls overnight. It scared Aiden Grimshaw so much that he locked himself into his closet after finding a particularly ruffled chicken had nested patiently outside his door the next morning, and it took three sets of gloves, two very fearless RAs that pretended not to wet themselves while they herded the flapping birds into cages, and seventeen minutes of soothing coos to get Aiden out of confinement and the chickens back home to their farm.

Louis very gratefully took credit for the hard work and fastidious planning that came with handling livestock and letting them run loose in a dormitory, a prank that not only earned Aiden sneezing in Louis' tea for the next two weeks but also the unanimous admiration and respect of the entire dorm, including the seniors who had lived to see the cow on the roof prank years before him.

The prank was so infamous, in fact, that despite the attempt of several RAs to take it down, a few boys down the hall framed a picture taken on Zayn’s phone of the chickens chasing after Niall and hung it up on the second floor bathroom door. Louis was regarded as the notorious prankster of the dormitory for years to follow, performing classic tomfoolery like the “toothpaste in the Oreo” and “spider in the salad” tricks that were harmless and hilarious and amused everybody. For Halloween of his sophomore year, he dressed up as the Grim Reaper for the costume party and only appeared to photobomb pictures to give everybody a proper scare after flicking through the photographs later, another prank that had him and Zayn laughing for an hour straight.

Then, one week into junior year, Harry Styles waltzes into the dormitory, the sort of freshman who would have been the perfect candidate for one of Louis’ freshmen initiation pranks, and seemingly erases all of Louis’ hard-earned history as most memorable prankster the entire university has ever seen, all in under one night and with a handful of buckets.

“Don’t brood,” Zayn says the next morning when he sees Louis resolutely staring at their soggy clothes draped over the shower rod, the hopelessly defeated way they hang in the air feeling very reflective of his current mood. “So he pulled off a good prank. You’ve done more.”

“A dorm can’t have two epic pranksters. It messes up the ecosystem.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Louis gives up staring at the wrinkled shirts that stand as symbols of his defeat to a bucket of water strategically placed over his door and moves over to where Zayn is hogging the space over the sink. He rifles through the cardboard box labeled with his name for his toothbrush. He definitely didn't miss the novelty of a communal bathroom.

“If I’m not the prankster, then what am I to this household?” Louis says, and he doesn’t realize how pathetic it sounds until it comes out of his mouth. Beside him, Zayn stops messing with his quiff while Louis goes elbow deep in a box of conditioner to find the toothpaste. “We should really unpack.”

“You are a great lad,” Zayn says, turning away from the mirror to face him and pull the toothbrush from his hand. “And my best friend. That’s what you are in this household.”

Zayn’s sleep-mussed hair and half-mast eyelids are too endearing to ignore when they pluck earnestly at Louis’ heartstrings, so he indulges in the sentiment for a moment with a cheeky smile before he snatches his toothbrush back and ruffles Zayn’s quiff.

“Tomorrow we really try to unpack, yeah?”

“Yeah, that’ll absolutely happen.”

\--

Louis leaves his room—and more specifically, the comfort of his bed and how lulling it is to count notches in the popcorn ceiling—for one reason and one reason only, which is that the emergency fruit roll ups stashed under his bed have already been devoured not one week into the school year and Louis gets inexplicably grumpy when he’s denied a proper breakfast.

He leaves Zayn to his bathroom ritual and grabs his notebook that does a great job of producing the illusion of productivity when he’s listening to his teachers ramble noteworthy tidbits of information on the giant whiteboard while he’s actually doodling dolphins in the margins, and he plans to stop only briefly in the kitchen to skirt by the activity and grab a banana.

Naturally, it doesn’t happen this smoothly.

The ground is still damp when Louis steps on the hallway carpet, feeling the wetness squelch under his shoes, and that’s the first sign that the dorm is yet to be finished with raving over the brilliance of last night’s hullaballoo. The second sign is a crowd of giggling sophomores gathered around the same curly head Louis remembers being responsible for soaking the entire dorm at three in the morning around the kitchen table, all of them begging the guy for details on how he executed his prank without waking up the whole floor and if he’ll consider roping in a few accomplices for his next prank. All of them have forgotten so very clearly about Louis’ shaving cream slip’n’slide prank it’s painful.

“Harry, you’ll do more, right? This dorm could use some entertainment,” a girl coos, draping her palm over Harry’s wrist. Louis watches as everybody nods their head in agreement and resists the urge to bring Zayn’s photo album of all of Louis’ best pranks downstairs to pass around under their noses. Not at all passive-aggressively.

“It was nothing,” Harry says in response, and now Louis has a name to work with. _Know thy enemy_ , Sun Tzu said, and Louis very much feels like a war of the prank variety is amiss. He takes his fun very seriously. “Just wanted a fun way to introduce myself to the dorm, is all.”

Louis considers passive-aggressively slipping by them and passive-aggressively grabbing something from the fruit bowl while silently judging all of them to be lucky enough to not have eight a.m. classes to prepare for. He wavers on the spot for a moment, then turns around and passive-aggressively stalks back up the stairs and back into his room where Zayn’s pitched himself back onto his bed for an early morning nap.

“All right, Zayn,” he announces to the room at large. “Time to show this dorm who the king is.”

“Hnnn,” Zayn murmurs into his pillow in response, and Louis takes it as a signed promise to be his sidekick through this ordeal.

\--

The thing about pranks, as Louis learned when his nine-year-old self scared Stan senseless with an altered Halloween mask covered in leaves and dirt hanging from his bedroom window, is that they’re addictive. Nobody plans one, watches the priceless reactions, and is sated. Even with the aftermaths on YouTube to be watched on endless loops, they come back for more.

So Louis does the smart thing and searches out Harry Styles before this goes further.

He finds him by mere coincidence when he’s passing through campus for lunch and sees Niall splayed out on the quad strumming a guitar while he’s stuffing a corned-beef sandwich in his mouth while a familiar head of distinctly curly hair lounges in the grass next to him, tapping the ground with his foot as Niall belts out a few notes here and there. Louis stalks over to them as casually as possible.

“What’s happening, Niall?”

“Hey, Louis!” Niall greets with a jovial wave of his hand. “Harry and I were just talking about you. I was telling him about the time you got that chicken to chase after me.”

“Sounds like a riot, mate,” Harry tells him from where he’s drinking up the sun with his elbows propping him up in the grass. He has the stress-free, innocent aura about him of a freshman, the I-can-handle-all-this-homework and this-campus-won’t-suck-me-financially-and-emotionally-dry feeling that Louis vaguely remembers. Louis manages a small quirk of a smile in return for his courtesy.

“Wanna hear something new?” Niall asks Louis, strumming out a stuttery beat on his guitar to practice an intro into what is surely a new folksy song of his. Louis actually likes listening to Niall sing, so it’s a shame that he’s here for the express purpose of intimidating Harry Styles with a hair swipe that, according to Zayn, is dreadfully condescending.

“I’m actually just here for a second,” Louis says. “I wanted to ask Harry something.”

His words definitely get Harry’s attention, who sits up and pulls the sunglasses off his head just as Louis kneels into the grass and readjusts the bridge of his. He flashes him a quick grin, one that he hopes conveys he’s here for nothing but swift business, and readjusts the strap of his school bag.

“If this is about your dry cleaning bill, I’m afraid I’ll have to start a tab,” Harry says through a wide dimpled grin. He really is the face of innocence and youth and freshman naïveté. Louis is going to take him down.

“Actually, I wanted to commend you for your inspiring prank yesterday,” Louis says, hurrying along when he sees the start of a smile on Harry’s face. “And let you know that from now on you can leave the pranks to me.”

“You’re the king of the jokers, yeah?” Harry asks him, still amused. Louis is prepared to say his entire spiel over and over until it sinks in.

“Something like that. And I’m not looking to be unseated from my throne.”

“Oh, I see,” Harry says slowly. He talks slowly, deliberately, like words are slow to form in his head and his sentences have to struggle through knee-deep mud to be formed. “You’re afraid of a little competition.”

Louis is flabbergasted; Harry is grinning. A shark’s grin, wide and toothy and baiting nearby predators. Louis is ashamed to say that it’s working flawlessly.

“A little competition,” Louis repeats carefully, and takes this moment to throw in the slow sweep of his fringe to the side to intimidate. Harry doesn’t seem to take much notice to his tactics. “If you want to take down this dorm, you’ll have to take me down first.”

“Okay,” is all Harry says in return. There’s still a huge smile on his face as he pushes his sunglasses by onto his nose and watches as Louis gets to his feet, brushes the grass off his knees, and waves his goodbyes to Niall. He looks cheeky and full of himself and barbarically brimming with fortitude, and Louis will show him a thing or two about pranks if it’s the last thing he does.

He skips class, e-mails the professor about his case of grievous diarrhea as he stops to get scones, and instead spends his time walking back to the dorm compiling a mental list of the worst, nastiest, most ingenuous pranks he can think of that will bring Harry Styles begging for mercy.

\--

“All right, so as it turns out, I’m in a life or death situation and I need your help.”

Zayn looks up from where his homework is propped up in his lap, thoroughly unimpressed. Louis is personally a little offended considering that what he has to say is infinitely more intriguing than rifling through an economics textbook that might as well be written in Latin. Zayn gives him a once over, like he’s briefly inspecting Louis for lethal wounds or bloodstains, and when he finds none, dismisses Louis’ plea for help all together. Louis needs better friends.

“The answer is no,” Zayn says, scribbling something onto his packet of homework. Louis catches a glimpse, and that packet is at leasttwenty pages if not more. He’s kidding himself if he thinks he’ll be finishing before the due date tomorrow, so he might as well listen to what Louis has to say. His logic is flawless.

“Hear me out.”

“No.”

Louis pulls Zayn’s book from his lap, because he’s not fooling anybody. Zayn couldn’t care less about homework in high school when all he ever had the energy to do was smoke behind the bleachers during gym, and Louis highly doubts he’s grown up into a responsible student since then. He tucks his textbook behind his back and beams.

“We’re going to start a prank war with Harry Styles,” Louis says with a flourish. Zayn still looks unimpressed, like he’s staring at a magic trick with an anti-climactic finish.

“Absolutely not,” he says. He doesn’t make a swipe for his book, but he does flop down on his sheets like the next object on his to-do list isn’t to listen to his good friend’s Louis’ plight, but to nap away the entire evening. Louis prods him in the ass.

“Zaaaaaayn,” Louis whines. He adds about ten extra _a_ s and makes them extensively whiny, falling to his knees by Zayn’s bunk and pinching the skin at his waist. Zayn smacks his hand away. “He dumped frigid water onto us in the middle of the night, don’t you want revenge?”

“Karma will take care of it,” Zayn murmurs into his pillow. “Be the bigger person.”

“When am I ever the bigger person?”

“Never,” Zayn says dutifully in return. He picks his nose from the depths of his pillow a moment later, like he’s been hit with a brilliant idea that will undoubtedly exploit Louis of his worth. “I’ll help if you let me take the top bunk.”

“Absolutely not,” Louis says without missing a beat, arms folded over his chest. “We did rock-paper-scissors fair and square.”

Zayn shrugs, a lazy smile on his face. It kills Louis how much he doesn’t give a shit. “Your loss, mate.”

\--

“Fuck Zayn,” Louis says vehemently as he crawls into the hallway at two in the morning with the stealth of an undercover spy. “I work fine as a solo artist.”

Okay, so he would’ve appreciated Zayn’s help with the planning and the lookout and the actual execution of the scheme if only to keep Louis from losing an hour of sleep setting a booby trap for Harry Styles and cut his work in half by sharing the effort, but other than that, Louis has everything under control as a lone wolf. Louis thinks of Zayn, tucked into his mountain of blankets and snoozing away his life in the hoodie he stole from Louis without asking permission, and thinks, not at all passive-aggressively, _I don’t need a fucking Robin._

He does have a long night ahead of him, though, as he pulls three spools of clear tape from his pocket and gets to work. He has a lot of ground to cover, taping Harry’s doorway, but if all goes as planned, the boy will be spending his entire morning mourning the loss of his knuckle hair and delicately peeling his curls from his invisible screen of tape. If he had the resources, Louis would be setting up hidden cameras if only to relive the moment over and over again.

He puts on the headlamp from the vacation he and his family partook in back when he was twelve and it was his lifelong mission to spelunk through a cave, securing the strap around his hair. The vacation had been spent groping through slimy cave walls while the twins wailed through the darkness like banshees, but Louis still managed to smuggle out a few supplies that, albeit a bit small for his head nowadays, are still endlessly useful for nefarious moments like these. He starts pulling tape from the spool and layering the strands precisely along the doorway, each row seamlessly continuing the first.

There’s something indescribably great about preparing another’s doom like this, Louis thinks, as he makes his way up to row number six. There’s a thrill that thrums through his veins like a shot of tequila when he’s decked out in his sleek black prank gear that blends into the night while he’s in the middle of planning his next laugh, the kind of excitement that not even the warmth of his bed at three a.m. can rival, and Louis is almost a little disappointed that he’s missing his partner in crime if only because he doesn’t get to feel the same anticipation and excitement of wrongdoing tickle at his insides that Louis does. So this is what Bond villains feel like.

“…Louis?”

The voice breaks his intense concentration, and promptly, Louis tumbles onto his ass as his headlamp goes crooked and illuminates a tunnel of light down the hallway. It lands on the intruder, a sleepy-haired boy in plaid pajamas who’s padding over to the bathroom for a wee or the kitchen for a late night snack of chocolate, and Louis lets out the breath he’s been holding captive in his lungs.

“Liam,” he says in relief, slowly getting up from the scene of his mischief and covering it up with his backside. The headlamp is still a little suspicious, though, so he slides it carefully off his head and waits for his eyes to get accustomed to the darkness. Through the shadows, Liam’s attempting to get a glimpse of whatever shenanigans he interrupted over Louis’ shoulders. “What are you doing up?”

“…just wanted a drink of water,” Liam says. He sounds groggy and a little disoriented, like if Louis is lucky he won’t remember any of this tomorrow in his sleep-addled confusion, and Louis shuffles cautiously in front of his growing wall of tape covering half of Harry Styles’ door. “What are _you_ doing?”

“Same,” Louis says right away. “Couldn’t sleep. Everything’s fine.”

Liam is giving him the type of x-ray look that’s seeing directly through his bold-faced lies, like he’s been in this dorm with him long enough to know what to expect from Louis and his late night adventures, and Louis prays to the cosmic deities of laughter and prankhood above that Liam won’t feel his usual grandfatherly need to intervene and put a stop to the madness even if it’s all in good fun. Louis won’t be forgetting anytime soon that time in freshmen year when Liam caught Louis attempting to butter the stairs and took it upon himself to confiscate all the slippery lard the kitchen had to offer within an hour.

“Well,” Liam says slowly. Louis gives him the epitome of a harmless smile, which probably does little if not nothing to convince him of his innocence. “…all right then. I guess I’ll let you get back to your room, then.”

“Rightio,” Louis says, clapping Liam on the shoulder and smoothly guiding him past the havoc he’s set up in front of Harry’s door. He gives him a few light pushes down the hall until he sees him heading in the direction of the stairs without turning back. “G’night then!”

He gets back to work the second Liam’s back disappears, his ears hypersensitive of all the sounds of cups clinking downstairs and the water running from the tap, and finishes his trap in record time. By the time Liam troddles back up the stairs, water in hand and eyes open for Louis’ tomfoolery, the headlamp, spools of tape, and signs of trouble are all gone.

Except for the tape, of course. But that’s for the morning.

\--

Louis wakes up to the beautiful sound of raucous laughter, a much preferred wake up call to the relentless blaring of his alarm, and a moment later, Zayn’s sleep-mussed hair pops up over his top bunk with a mutinous look of disturbed slumber in his eyes.

“What did you do,” Zayn says instantly, and it isn’t a question. Louis bites his lip, smiles cheekily, and shimmies the sheets off his legs.

“What makes you think I had anything to do with the ruckus out there, mate?” Louis says with the smile of a cherub. Zayn watches with the eyes of a hawk as Louis pats his head and hops onto the floor.

“You pranked Harry last night.”

“What blasphemous accusations! I won’t answer anything until I see my lawyer.”

Zayn isn’t amused, but there’s a slight quirk to his lips like he’s curious what awaits him on the other side of the door. The laughter seems to be growing as the dorm steadily awakens, and if Louis is lucky, Nick Grimshaw is out there recording the entire fiasco and uploading it to YouTube as they speak. He can always count on Nick to move everybody’s humiliation from local to viral.

Louis doesn’t grin yet, not when Zayn is yet to be sold on his mischief, instead biting the insides of his cheeks until they hurt and grabbing Zayn by the wrist to pull him into the hall. He can’t wait for the sight—Harry Styles entangled in a booby trap of clear tape while he tries to pull his precious hair free of the sticky cage—so naturally, as it always occurs because the beings above enjoy laughing at Louis more than they enjoy watching Louis laugh, that’s not how it happens.

“Somehow I have the feeling things didn’t go as planned,” Zayn says next to him, and Louis deflates a bit.

A crowd has gathered around the spectacle. The prank was admittedly successful and has taken a victim in its web, but instead of Harry pulling himself free, it’s his roommate Ed who’s currently cursing up a storm as he slowly pulls his fringe away without it saying goodbye to its beloved home on his scalp while onlookers snap pictures and attempt to help along the way.

“Tomlinson!” Ed yells the second he sees him emerge into the hall. Zayn is already disappearing back into their room behind him, clearly uninterested in showcasing any sort of involvement in Louis’ monkey business even just by the association of standing next to him, and Louis steps forward to help and steps back a moment later to curse his luck. He had thought, of course, of the possibility of Harry’s roommate being the hapless, unintended victim to a crime meant specifically for Harry, but had chalked it up to a low chance if the rumors of Ed needing at least twelve hours of hard sleep to function held any truth.

“Don’t worry, mate,” says a voice behind Ed, and suddenly there’s Harry giving Ed a supportive pat on the shoulder as he cuts through the tape and helps pull one row off his nose. “This trap wasn’t meant for you.”

He catches Louis’ eye over the crowd of dispersing people—lo’n’behold, there’s Nick cackling as he stops the video recording on his phone—and there’s something like a challenge in his gaze. His lips are tugged up in what can only be described as one of the filthiest _come and get it_ smiles Louis has ever seen, and the fact that it isn’t being sent his way as an invitation for sex is simultaneously frustrating and disappointing. Louis clears his head of all thoughts of fraternizing with the enemy, because it’s still stage one of their war and Louis still has an entire arsenal of trouble to cause before he even thinks of folding because a freshman is grinning at him like he’s shark bait across the hall.

“Sorry, Ed,” Louis calls jovially across the hall, keeping his distance because Ed looks positively murderous as he yanks a piece of tape off his forehead that steals several of his hairs with it as souvenirs.

“Nice try, mate,” Harry says in return, still grinning. There’s something predatory in his eyes that Louis is almost urged to look away from. Instead, he returns a grin just as lethal. “Is that all you got?”

And then he’s gone, laughing as he pulls Ed into their room to detangle him from the rest of his trap of tape and leaving Louis to stare aghast and open-mouthed at thin air.

It’s on.

\--

“I hope that you learned your lesson,” Zayn says the moment he comes back ten minutes later from a trip to the kitchen that resulted in congratulatory high-fives all around for his work. Louis is personally proud that his work is so recognizable, it’s practically trademarked as a Tomlinson masterpiece every time one of his prank emerges. “Ed is going to poison your fucking breakfast.”

“I’m too pretty to die,” Louis says as he offers Zayn a cookie pilfered from downstairs. If there’s anything enjoyable about the start of the school year, it’s the multitude of freshmen who are continuously baking pastries to convince the upperclassmen that they’re worth a good impression well into wintertime.

“The RA is gonna ride your ass this year if you keep on pulling stunts,” Zayn tells him as he takes the proffered cookie without a word of gratitude. “You were a cute sophomore last year, but now you’re supposed to be a role model and all that shit.”

“The youngins can look up to you instead, since you suddenly have the moral compass of the fucking pope,” Louis says, frowning. “When did you get so uptight about pranks?”

“I just don’t want a repeat of last year when Olly put a fish in my laundry thinking it was yours as payback,” Zayn says, devouring his cookie in two bites and holding his hand out for more. Louis was planning on rationing his stash, but Zayn doesn’t wait for approval as he pulls another out of his handful of chocolate chip heaven.

“Aww, Zaynie is afraid of getting his hands dirty.”

“More like I’m afraid of getting caught in the crossfire.”

Louis pouts and pushes at Zayn's hips until he scoots over on his bed and makes room for Louis, sliding into his tiny bunk on top of his mountains of blankets and ruffling him in the hair like he knows Zayn hates. As expected, Zayn growls and smoothes his hair back into place the second Louis pulls his fingers back.

“You’re already frightened of so many things, darling,” Louis says with a heavy sigh, pillowing himself on Zayn’s chest and staring at the wooden splinters dangling above his eyes from the upper bunk. He idly pulls one off and flicks it away to mingle among the carpet threads. “And there’s medication for all of them.”

Zayn pets absently at his shoulder as he scarfs down his next cookie. “I’m not afraid of a few pranks, Louis,” he says, but it’s in the same voice he used to protest _I don’t need a nightlight, Louis_ or _of course I’m not scared of airplanes_ or _what makes you think I can't handle a tiny little spider_ in, so Louis carefully reserves judgment. “Styles has nothing on me.”

\--

“ _LOUIS!_ ”

Louis is awoken from his very productive session of naptime that he very vividly remembers began as his determined attempt to study for his English Lit test from what must be the scream of a banshee, his mind reasons, and nearly launches himself off the top level of his bunk as his instinctual response to stop, drop, and roll through the panic kicks in. His reflexes make a last minute heroic appearance and order his hands to grab onto his mattress to keep him from tumbling six feet to his premature death. He’s still orienting himself around the room and the book he drooled on for what he hopes wasn’t more than a twenty-minute power slumber when Zayn all but staggers into the room like a man who’s discovered a murder in his bathtub.

A second later, Louis realizes why.

“Holy shit,” is all Louis’ mind can formulate as a response. Zayn throws his hair towel at him to little effect as Louis scrambles off his bed to stare.

“Purple,” Zayn says in response. He looks almost catatonic by this point, stunned with rage and disbelief that’s sculpted his face into not one of his better looks. He’s still stuck in an unfinished post-shower routine, towel secured over his hips and eyes glazed, and just as Louis starts carding his fingers through Zayn's bright lilac quiff, he snaps. “Fucking _do_ something, Louis!”

He grips onto Louis’ shoulders so tightly his collarbones almost push out through his backside, and Louis stifles the urge to laugh as he takes it all in. There’s Zayn, pushed to the brink of madness because his elegant ebony hair is no longer a sophisticated contrast to his skin, but instead the shade of a five-year-old girl’s bathroom because he’s fallen victim to a prank that most likely was meant for Louis’ hair to encounter instead. He should probably be angry, considering that this was an attack on his team and Zayn is definitely not collateral damage in his army, but Louis has to stop to give the guy momentary kudos. _Purple hair_.

“Deep breaths,” Louis instructs, peeling the tight grip of Zayn’s hands off his shoulders and sitting him firmly down in the desk chair. There’s a mirror propped up on the desk that Louis promptly shoves into the drawer as he backs up into the hallway and runs into the communal bathroom to investigate the scene of the crime, and there, propped up in the shower rack as innocent as ever, is Zayn’s brand name shampoo that he insists on investing in more cash than he does their food supply and has _PROPERTY OF ROOM 302 DO NOT FUCKING TOUCH_ written all over it in waterproof marker. Running down the side is a wayward ooze of runaway shampoo, glistening in the bathroom light and dying the plastic it’s touching a bright, demanding shade of lavender. Zayn is going to kill somebody.

Louis throws the bottle away before they make the same mistake twice, stuffing it into the bin and taking a moment to marvel over the fact that Zayn’s scream carries enough to travel from the bathroom all the way over into their room. The boy has lungs on him like nobody’s business.

Louis doesn’t linger, though, not when Zayn is plotting slaughter in their room as the seconds tick by, so Louis all but dashes back through the hallway to soothe and comfort. He’s not sure if his usual tactics of offering Zayn a session of hoodie snuggling or warm tea will do it this time, though, and he digs through his brain with no ideas but _lots and lots of alcohol_ springing forward.

“Purple,” Zayn is still saying faintly to the room at large when Louis returns. He doesn’t have the heart to tell Zayn he was forced to throw away a salon bottle of shampoo that was hardly used and recommended by Alan Rickman himself, so instead he kneels by him and pets him softly on the knee. “I’m like an extra for the Purple Rain video.”

“It’s not that bad, babe,” Louis tells him, fixedly ignoring the fact that the purple is growing more prominent by the second as Zayn’s hair continues to dry. It’s sticking in all directions, like the strands are trying to pick up signals for local television channels, and Louis feels bad for the poor sap not even getting the chance to finish his precise hair routine. “It’s probably not permanent.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Zayn growls, hands a deathly white where they're curled into fists on his thighs. “I will smother him with my fucking _purple hair_ and finish off the rest with my bare hands.”

“That’s pretty aggressive.”

“ _Purple_ ,” Zayn says again for emphasis, and then blindly reaches out to seize Louis’ hand and squeeze his fingers. “Forget everything else I ever said. I’m in.”

And just like that, Louis gets himself a crew.

\--

Zayn gets away with wearing a low-hanging beanie for approximately three days before he can no longer hide his brilliantly lilac hair, and it takes Louis seventeen minutes of cooing at him from under his sheets for him to emerge for breakfast without a shawl over his head. As expected, there’s a smattering of laughter, but even more expectedly, there are girls who are positively swooning at his rebellious look.

“Why is it that Malik can pull everything off,” Nick is grumbling into his pancakes as Zayn gets compliments from what appears to be the entire dorm jammed into the kitchen for a spot of breakfast before classes. “He could walk down here in a trash bag and still be ogled.”

“It’s not sticking around,” Zayn is saying to everybody firmly while Louis rifles through the fridge for a passable apple. “I’m going back to black as soon as physically possible.”

"Aww, but it fits you so nicely."

Louis is tuning out the praises, to be honest, even if it's helping Zayn overcome the strong aversion he's harboring for his new look, currently looking out over the staircase to see if Harry will show up anytime soon to revel in his horribly botched attempt and scramble to apologize. Louis knows perfectly well that he was the one meant to be strutting about with feathery purple locks right about now to be laughed at and posted twenty times over on Facebook, and the sight of Harry's face tasting defeat is tasting sweeter on his tongue than the ripe sugary apple he's currently devouring.

“Oh, shit,” a voice is saying from the stairs not ten seconds later, and Louis' wishes have been granted.

There's Harry, hand hiding his open jaw and eyes as wide as tree trunks as his eyes land on the train wreck that is his misdirected prank, while Louis beams like the sun is shining out of his ass all the while. He’s still in his pajamas, clearly not looking for more than a quick bowl of cereal before a two-hour lecture sucks the life out of him, and his eyes zero in on the beacon that is Zayn’s bright hair almost instantaneously. Louis promptly stuffs his face into the freezer to muffle his laughter at his positively horrified stare. His only remaining wish is that he'd have a camera to forever document his expression of utter horror etched blatantly over his face. Priceless.

“Well, he clearly didn’t expect that,” Louis says cheekily as he pulls his nose out of the frozen peas and grins at Zayn, who doesn’t look any less murderous than he did that day he was making a puddle on the desk chair with leftover shower droplets truckling down his back while Louis petted his cheek and convinced him he was still plenty beautiful at the sight of Harry’s appearance. “Think we win this round?”

“I’m not afraid to punch you, Tomlinson,” Zayn says breezily just as Harry awkwardly wanders down the stairs, a blush the color of burning tomatoes dotting the apples of his cheeks as he approaches the two of them conspiring over the fruit bowl. He looks petrified, and apologetic, and also a little amused. He's doing a poor job of properly veiling that last emotion.

“Nice hair there, mate,” Harry finally says, keeping a generous distance between him and Zayn. “Pull it off quite nicely. Do the curtains match the drapes?”

“I’m not even laughing on the inside,” Zayn deadpans, and beckons Harry closer with one deadly finger that Harry is brave enough to lean into. “I hope you’re planning on sleeping with one eye open from now on, Styles.”

Harry does a look a little daunted when he pulls away a moment later, eyes wide and lips slightly parted. Louis sneaks a glance, and yeah, Zayn definitely can rock the laser eyes that could pierce solid bank vaults if put to the test right about now, and tries not to feel inexplicably proud. Louis is left with nothing to do but smile at the fridge like the proudest coronel in the army because his team definitely doesn’t fuck around.

“…I’ll remember that,” Harry says. If Louis didn’t know any better, he’d take his words as a symbol of surrender, but then there’s a flash of fearless mischief under his lashes that catches Louis’ eyes as quick as lightning, and Louis realizes it’s only just begun.

“He’s not done,” Zayn says, sounding slightly disappointed at his own ability to properly threaten freshmen as Harry grabs the entire box of Cocoa Puffs and disappears back up the stairs, and Louis pats him on the back.

“Neither are we.”

\--

Louis was absolutely wrong—the best part of pranking isn’t the feeling of misbehaving race up his limbs like thrilling prickles while the urge to cackle bubbles up his throat, it’s fighting for room over the peephole with Zayn while they stare out into the hallway waiting for Harry and Ed to leave their dorm and their next plan to commence.

Zayn is a perfect partner in crime. He has the poker face of a corpse, the wicked ideas of a Disney villain, plus the affinity for snack breaks that Louis himself is far from opposed to, and together, they make an unstoppable two-man gang that could easily take down the entire dorm in one swoop. Screw sitting in solitude in the darkness of a hallway like an outtake from _Mission: Impossible_. Louis works better in a team. Not to mention that it would have been a struggle to carry all that saran wrap alone.

“I can’t see anything,” Louis whines as he tries to see clearly through the keyhole to no avail while Zayn hogs the peephole. “Move your hips, Malik.”

He pushes at Zayn’s legs until Zayn grumbles and makes way, positioning himself in front of the keyhole. He squints his eye and sees a tiny sliver of a lit hallway that is of no help visually. He tugs on Zayn's pant leg as a wordless plea for him to keep Louis updated.

“I see them, I see them,” Zayn says a moment later, just as Louis abandons the keyhole and attempts to stick his nose out the crack between the floor and the door and at least track the shadows of their feet. He taps out a frantic rhythm on Louis’ shoulder to alert him. “They’re chatting… walking… heading to the stairs… I think they’re gone.”

“Did they lock the door?”

“I can bobby pin that bitch,” Zayn says easily a second later. His hair is back to its inky black state, no longer the vibrant purple shade of My Little Pony’s mane, and Louis has to admit, he misses the purple just a tad. It definitely kept things interesting for a total of one grand week.

They sneak out into the hallway after giving Harry and Ed a two minute window to turn around and grab a forgotten item, ears open and eyes aloft for Niall pandering about in search of his last candy bar or Ed and Harry’s return, and when the coast remains clear, Zayn hisses _go go go!_ in Louis' ear and all but pushes him down the hall to their room while he sets to work jiggling the tumblers on the lock. It’s impressive, and slightly concerning that he can pick a lock so quickly, Louis watching with one arched brows as Zayn deftly fiddles with the lock and pushes the door open a moment later, satisfied with his work. Louis wonders if he wants the full story or not.

“Hmm,” Louis says carefully, inspecting his work as the door swings open. “Should we use our talents for good or evil?”

“Get in there,” Zayn says, clearly not messing around, and the entire operation feels so much like an undercover bank break-in that Louis is feeling like a character plucked right out of the television during an action movie. Zayn tosses him a roll of saran wrap from the twenty cases stacked under his arm, and Louis salutes him as he zeroes in on the options for his first target.

“Take the desk. I’ll take the bed,” Louis instructs, and he seizes the first pillow he sees on the mess of Harry’s unmade bed and starts vigorously wrapping it.

Louis can hardly wait. Saran wrap is the living worst already when it's covering leftover pans of food, but it's infinitely worse when it's rolled repeatedly around furniture. It gets tangled in the fingers and is wildly uncomfortable and won't guarantee that furniture will emerge scratch free if anybody attempts to slice their way through twenty layers of it, and Louis is practically giddy as he finishes his first roll packing up Harry's bed in airtight balls of wrapped cotton and breaks open the next box.

The problem with saran wrap, however, is that no matter how difficult it'll inevitably be for Harry to free his furniture from the confines of satanic kitchen wrap, it's almost as difficult for Zayn and Louis to successfully handle it themselves. It takes a total of three minutes for the first flaws of their plan to manifest, the most prominent problem being that Saran wrap is a total bitch. Louis gently detangles his hand from his thoroughly crinkled sheet as he grabs the nearest lampshade while next to him, Zayn is swearing as he repeatedly attempts to shake the creases out of his roll and proceeds to worsen the situation tenfold. It always looked infinitely easier when Louis was watching his mother slide wrap over ham and sandwiches, like handling it properly is a trick that comes with adulthood. Louis was similarly disillusioned the first time he attempted to use a laundry machine or peel his own fruit without his mother's help.

“Fuck,” Zayn grumbles, throwing a ball of wrinkles in the corner and starting anew when he can’t smooth out the millions of creases forming in his roll. “I knew we should have done the fucking wrapping paper instead.”

Louis throws down another successfully wrapped trinket and glances across the room to see Zayn’s work. He’s in the middle of an epic sparring match with his roll of saran wrap, but Louis is a little too preoccupied to help. He haphazardly wraps a lamp next and is just about to move on to the bedpost when something catches his eye between Harry’s bed and the nightstand—a tiny box peeking out from under the bed that, from the looks of it, is a poorly concealed sex stash.

He can practically hear his mother’s voice drill into his head warning him not to snoop, but he’s already in the middle of defacing the boy’s property, so a little divulging into his box of tricks and lotions shouldn’t be that much worse on the rungs of sin. Besides, he's curious and nosy just like a boy should be. He carefully pulls it out, momentarily forgetting about the task at hand, and that’s when he sees it. A _dildo_.

“Holy shit, Zayn,” Louis says. There, resting among a bed of mix and match condoms and a tube of lube, is a dark purple vibrator that’s nestled comfortably in its home. Zayn pays no more attention than a slight grunt across the room. “Harry’s a queer.”

“That’s nice,” Zayn says absently, too busy walking in circles around the dresser while he lets his roll run out.

“He’s got _sex toys_ ,” Louis presses. This definitely opens up a new side to Harry, a boy who five minutes ago was nothing but a freshman with nice hair who was in over his head by taking on Louis via his specialty of wreaking havoc, and now Louis is forced to reevaluate everything he’s ever assumed of him, like that he’s a sad little vanilla boy with no real zest in his life, and that’s why he turns to pranks to give him the attention he desperately seeks. Apparently he’s nothing of the sort, instead the kind of kid who likes to fuck himself when his roommate’s gone and explore his sexuality. Louis is just starting to wonder if that predatory gaze in his eyes is the same one he might use when he slithers up someone’s body and encourages them to come in that deep, accented voice of his, but then Zayn is tossing another roll of saran wrap at his face and telling him to hurry the fuck up.

“Would you like to try them out, or would you like to finish this up?” Zayn yells pointedly, tossing another finished case onto the floor and pushing the dresser back up against the wall. The room is starting to look like a giant safe room, padded to the max with soft saran wrap that will take hours to peel off without scissors scratching the furniture. Twice the effort, but definitely better than wrapping paper.

Louis kicks the box back under the bed even though his pulse is racing uncommonly fast against his neck and his insatiable curiosity is urging him to peek under the bed for more, whether it be porn magazines or handcuffs or assless chaps. He's completely aware of Zayn’s eyes watching the back of his head, though, so he remembers what he came here to do: fuck shit up.

So he grabs the nearest lamp and does, definitely and absolutely not thinking about Harry Styles naked all the while. 

\--

They snap a few pictures of their victory after they’re done wrapping everything from Harry’s laptop to Ed’s guitar, and manage to sneak back into their room undetected later that night. Louis never wants to see saran wrap again in his life, but he’s pretty sure it was worth it.

He wakes up to a note slipped under the door, all of the letters capitalized and some words underlined three times for emphasis, and grins.

It reads:

_saran wrap is for food_

_dorm rooms are not_

_you should watch your back_

_because it’s about to get hot_.

\--

Dear lord, the _stench_.

Louis has had his nose plugged for the last hour and a half, silently wondering if fumigation is the only option at this point other than falling prey to the odor and letting sweet death claim him. His nose will _never_ forget the smell, not after five showers or two entire cans of air refresher have been depleted. It’s a horrible mixture of rotting seafood and mold and old casserole that’s been left out in the sun, and he wonders if he will lose his sense of smell to this. Maybe even his entire nose will need to be amputated. It seems perfectly possible.

It's not any better for Zayn, who's had his hand over his nose like a makeshift gas mask ever since they’re stepped into their room, the slightest marks of tears by his eyes where the stink seems to be breaking his resolve. Louis can relate. It’s almost _acidic_.

The worst part being, of course, that they haven't the foggiest idea of where the fuck it's coming from.

Louis already knows who to blame. He knew the second he stepped into the veritable gas chamber that is supposed to be his sanctuary where he can play Temple Run on his phone in bed with no one to judge him and spill crumbs on the remaining one foot square that’s clear of his and Zayn’s shit. _Styles_. He feels like he should be shaking a clenched fist of fury at the sky at this point because not only does this boy play dirty, he plays _well_. Dammit.

So well, in fact, that they had to search out help. Of all people, they didn’t want to involve Liam, but desperate times call for desperate measures. They’ve upturned practically the whole place breathing through their mouths, pillows strewn across the room and all of Zayn’s comic books no longer organized and stacked neatly in their shelf, but unsystematically rifled through in a frantic search for the origin of the odor. All their clothing is inside out. No luck.

“So you looked everywhere,” Liam says, and he looks like every word is causing him physical pain as his lungs fill up with yet more of the stench. Louis will be smelling it in his nightmares tonight. Liam picks up one of Zayn’s pants with his thumb and forefinger, as if fruitlessly hoping that a rotting halibut is laying under them. No such luck.

“I think the only option,” Louis says through his plugged nose. He sounds horribly nasal, but he has bigger issues on hand at the moment, “is to burn everything. Including the entire room. Walls are chipping a little anyway. What do you say, lads? Got any matches?”

“Let’s not overreact,” Liam is saying cautiously, but the tears are starting to prickle at his eyes as well as he hacks up a tiny lung. Zayn pats him on the back as he coughs through the stench. “This is about Harry, isn’t it?”

Zayn and Louis exchange dark looks that Liam unfortunately isn’t blind to. He shakes his head in what feels a lot like fatherly disapproval and Louis feels his ears turn red. He and Liam are the same age, he shouldn’t feel like a child scolded for putting his hand in the cookie jar before dinner every time they speak.

“This pranking is ridiculous,” Liam says when no answer is clearly enough of an answer for him. “It won’t end well.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, save it,” Louis says, waving off his warnings. There are bigger priorities here. He's at the point of suspecting that innards are in the air ducts. “What do we do?”

“I guess we could tell the RA to get an exterminator,” Liam suggests. “You know they won’t be happy about this.”

“Last I checked, there’s no rule against steaming fish up in your dorm room, now is there, Zayn?” Louis says pointedly. Zayn nods, nose tucked securely into his elbow, and Liam rolls his eyes. “And that’s exactly what this was.”

"Exactly," Zayn agrees like good mate he is, and miraculously, Liam doesn't ask further questions.

\--

They get yelled at for approximately fourteen minutes for their “irresponsible behavior” and “endless ruckus” and “unbelievable immaturity” by their fuming RA by the time they report the unbearable stench because nobody is stupid enough to believe that any havoc in Louis’ dorm is the result of a purely innocent accident, and Louis silently plays tic tac toe in his mind while the roaring continues. He nods through it all, Zayn mirroring him, until they’re dismissed and told to evacuate until the exterminator comes to investigate further in the morning.

Aside from the overwhelming urge to vomit all over Zayn’s shoes every time the stench wafts back into his nose like an unshakable memory, it’s an excuse to have a slumber party in the lounge, which Louis has wanted to do for all the three years he’s lived in the dormitory. The lounge isn’t exactly Hilton hotel material, but there’s a tinny television and a lumpy couch that’s seen more stains than a chef’s apron, and that’s enough for Louis as he rolls out his sleeping bag on the floor and throws Zayn a nightlight that Zayn promptly attempts to stuff down Louis’ pants.

“What’s our rebuttal attack?” Zayn asks after they’re both settled in their sleeping bags, staring at the cobwebs forming overhead on the shadowy ceiling. Definitely not the Hilton.

“I’m thinking something with livestock,” Louis brainstorms. “Something that shits.”

“Do you still have the number of that farm?”

Louis gropes over Zayn’s chest to grab a generous handful of gummy bears from the bowel on his side. He’s pretty sure he could wrangle a horse into the dormitory, but he’s slightly worried about being labeled as a one-trick-pony if he does. Nobody’s forgotten about the chickens yet.

They fall asleep with the soft sound of _Friends_ playing quietly on television in the background, Louis snuggled into his sleeping bag and Zayn hogging all of the available floor space as expected. It feels like they’re ten-year-olds begging their parents to go camping again, crammed into a tiny bag and watching out for spiders. It’s oddly therapeutic, even if tomorrow they’ll have to face the stench cage that is their room if they so much as want to grab their homework or fresh underwear, and Louis almost feels like thanking Harry for the opportunity. Almost.

“Think Harry knows I know he’s gay?” Louis slurs to the ceiling an hour later, memories of Harry’s box of goodies flashing back into his mind. It makes him stir in his sleeping bag and imagine if Harry’s masturbating right now, or if he’s busy planning his next offense on Zayn’s hair or Louis’ clothes, or if he's thinking about Louis at all. Louis thinks he underestimated Harry, assumed him to be as cheesy as his bucket-over-the-door-trick was, but he’s smart and clever and effectively managed to one-handedly clear Zayn and Louis out of their room with the mystery stench from hell. Louis is impressed, and oddly enough, wishes he knew more than just the tidbits he's picked up on from the various trinkets and pictures and wall art in his room that tells Louis he likes obscure Indie bands and loves his sister. They're all things Louis' observed mid-prank, things that feel like Louis doesn't deserve to know through spying, and he'd rather hear all the stories straight from Harry's mouth. Even old war nemeses could sit down over tea and discuss treaties and land in peace sometimes.

“Mmmmfrr,” is Zayn’s eloquent response, a truly royal snore, and that’s all he has to say on the matter.

\--

“Why wasn’t I invited to the slumber party?”

Louis cracks open an eye despite his brain firmly telling him to roll over and continue sleeping, but there are noises of silverware clinking and soft laughter from the kitchen like breakfast has begun and the dorm is slowly about to get noisier still as the sun rises. Standing over his sleeping bag with a cup of tea and a thoroughly curious smirk is Harry, wearing nothing but a deep v-neck and a pair of tight jeans, and all Louis’ brain can muster up in response is _can the v-neck go deeper_.

“Is that tea,” he says instead, rubbing his palms into his eyes and slowly sitting up. His back feels like at least thirty bones are horrendously out of place from sleeping on what might as well be a concrete floor with a slab of carpet taped over it and the TV is still quietly running an infomercial as white noise in the background, but at least he’s not waking up with the smell of molding seaweed in his nose.

“Yeah, green,” Harry says, and then hands the mug to Louis after a moment’s consideration. “Here, you look like you need it.”

“Did you spit in it,” Louis says slowly, observing the mug via a slow three-hundred-and-sixty degree rotation that passes inspection. Harry laughs and shakes his head, but Louis is already taking deep gulps and letting the warmth wake his bones.

“Are sleepovers part of the dormitory tradition?” Harry asks after Louis reemerges from the depths of the cup and curls his fingers around it. Louis’ eyes rove over Zayn, drooling elegantly on the carpet, the upturned bowl of gummy bears next to him, and the sleeping bag twisted around his ankles. All that’s missing is his diary strewn out next to him alongside his curling iron.

“Only when your room is in need of extermination,” Louis tells him over the rim of his mug. He lets it sink in, and a second later Harry is muffling his gleeful laughter in his palm that sounds a lot like delightful victory. Louis kicks at his ankles through the sleeping bag.

“Wow,” Harry says. “I thought for sure you guys would’ve found it.”

“Found what, the army of dead eels you put in the air vents?”

“You don’t need an exterminator,” Harry tells him, and then leans forward with a grin, like he’s sharing secrets. Louis feels himself leaning in to hear despite himself, Harry’s breath warm as it flits over his ear. “The secret is in the curtain rod.”

_The curtain rod_. It’s genius. Louis is mentally kicking himself in the ass as they speak.

“You just told me your whole plan,” Louis says slowly when Harry pulls back. “You’re the worst prankster ever.”

Harry shrugs. He looks like he’s just awoken, something sleepy still pulling at his eyes and his curls unruly, like they’ve never seen a comb in their life, and it makes Louis want to curl into his chest and sleep some more. He quickly stomps the hell out of that idea before it continues to rear its ugly head. Harry smiles, and it tugs at his whole face like a light switch.

“I dunno,” he says with a tiny shrug. “I got you pretty good, didn’t I?”

\--

After Zayn wakes up, Louis calls off the exterminator and endures another seven minutes of yelling from his RA when he breaks the news to her that all the fuss is unnecessary. They shake her off, roll up their sleeping bags, and dive into their room like divers jumping into the sea—with plugged noses and a deep breath.

They yank down the curtain rod and unscrew the ends, and, as promised, twenty rotting shrimp roll out on the carpet. Zayn looks positively murderous.

Mournfully, as he throws them into the trash and waves the smelly little messengers of Satan goodbye, Louis thinks that Harry’s won this round.

\--

“Did you know that Harry’s recruited Niall?” Zayn says while him and Louis are pouring honey into Harry’s bed two days later, squeezing a generous glob into the sheets while Louis opens his second bottle.

“ _What_?” Louis says sharply, head snapping over to him to verify this information as honey dribbles off the side off the mattress. All these wafts of sweet honey in his nose are making him want tea.

“Yeah. Guess it’s only fair, since you have me.”

“How do you know Niall's gone over to the dark side?”

Zayn shrugs, slathering the pillow in syrup—a last minute addition in case of the emergency that they ran out of honey—and checks over his shoulder at the rickety clock on the wall to make sure lunchtime isn’t over yet. “Saw them conspiring together with Ed,” he says. “You know Niall knows dirt on us. This won’t be pretty.”

“He’s probably just upset that we didn’t invite him to our impromptu sleepover,” Louis reasons, rolling his eyes and throwing another empty bottle into the trash bag tucked into his back pocket.

“Or he’s still out for revenge for last year’s bird attack,” Zayn says. “You finished over there?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, stepping back to admire their handiwork and motioning for Zayn to cover their mess with Harry’s sheets. Perfect. “Shame we won’t get to see his reaction.”

“We’ll hear the shouting,” Zayn says, a criminal glint in his eyes. Louis wouldn’t trade partners in crime for all the footage in the world of Harry Styles falling for his booby traps.

\--

Oddly enough, back when he was dying of popularity battles and peer pressure in high school, college always seemed like the rebellious escape of the future, complete with drinking and boom boxes and flash mobs in campus libraries. Now that he's actually made it here and is facing a Friday night, the crux of all dangerous adventures fueled by hard liquor, all Louis wants to do is rub his feet and burn his English notes. If this is adulthood, Louis wants out.

“Gimme a piggyback,” Louis whines into Zayn’s ear as he hauls his impossibly heavy backpack up the dormitory stairs on his shoulders. “I had a hard day.”

“How hard?” Zayn asks. He is carrying no school bag or lugging textbooks the size of encyclopedias around campus. His school supplies consist of nothing but a stubby yellow pencil tucked behind his ear, which Louis thinks is injustice at its finest.

“Two tests,” Louis moans dramatically. “And it rained on me when I was running late to English class. All the people with umbrellas were laughing at me.”

He pouts theatrically until Zayn sighs and hunches over, Louis obediently climbing onto his back and nosing at his neck when Zayn starts trotting down the hall to their room. He could get used to this type of transportation, even if he’s slowly slipping down Zayn’s backside and Zayn moves at the pace of a snail caught in molasses. His feet ache from running across campus and his brain cells are no longer functioning after staring at a double-sided scantron for sixty minutes, and all he wants is a cup of tea and Zayn to give him a massage while he watches videos of puppies on YouTube.

“I’m not giving you a massage,” Zayn says instantly, like years of close-knit teamwork has given them a telepathic link, and Louis groans into his neck as he unlocks their door and lets Louis slide off onto his feet. “We gotta live it up a bit more.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Louis says, already making himself comfortable in one of Zayn’s sweatshirts and moving to burrow into his pillow. He still has equations floating around in his head that he’d very much like to sleep off. Zayn seems to think alcohol will do a better job.

“Dorm down the street is having a party,” Zayn tells him, dragging him off the bed and slinging his arm around his neck. “I’ll get you nice and drunk.”

He tweaks his nose and Louis already finds himself succumbing to Zayn’s charms, which is unfair considering that it’s only been two minutes. He really ought to work on his self-control.

“Yeah, okay,” Louis caves, pulling Zayn’s hoodie back off before he decides to fall asleep in it. “Sounds like an okay idea.”

\--

“This was a fucking incredible idea!” Louis roars over the thumping of the stereo, the ground beneath him churning along to the beats of the music loudly enough to be mistaken for an earthquake. He has a crown made of toilet paper wrapped around his head and there’s a mosh pit of Disney karaoke happening in the other room while Niall sings along to a dubstep version of _A Part of Your World_ , and it’s everything Louis expects out of wild college parties and needs to wash the numbing sensation of _school_ and _learning_ from his tortured mind.

“Told you it’d be good for you,” Zayn yells back over the noise. He appears to have taped tequila bottles to his palms—not a bad DIY idea—and Louis takes another generous gulp from the cup of unidentifiable liquor pushed into his hands at the start of the party. He thinks it might be a margarita gone wrong considering it makes his head spin every time he so much as takes a whiff, but it tastes like summer in a cup so he won’t ask too many questions.

Louis is incredibly drunk. He hasn't been this drunk since he and Zayn first thought it was a good idea to raid his mother's liquor cabinet and get raving drunk in the backseat of Zayn's car when they were sixteen, and despite Louis' history of spilling humiliating secrets and crossing lines of tact fully invisible to his inebriated mind, he very much wants to drink more. There's a whole pyramid of shots lined up in the hall Louis has yet to sample, and he's fully relying on Zayn to keep an eye on him and make sure nobody takes advantage of his drunken affinity of touching everybody everywhere. Sometimes he licks too, which people unfortunately often take the wrong way. 

He wants to dance really, really badly, and so he does. He bangs his head and spins in circles until the entire room is one giant blender, colors blurring together and music pounding in from every side. Man, he’s the best drunk in the world.

It’s a great turn out, actually, for such a tiny dorm room. If he was claustrophobic Louis would be hurling out the window by now, every step resulting in him bumping into a clumsy dancer or a beer keg or a girl wearing nothing but balloons. Even Liam’s letting loose, aggressively dancing with a lamp with a bottle of vodka in his free hand without a care in the world. Louis would be taking pictures if he could convince his mind to focus.

“Bathroom,” Zayn whispers in his ear a moment later, disappearing into the crowd and leaving Louis to wonder how the hell he’s supposed to use the toilet successfully when he has alcohol duct taped to his fingers, but before he can devote too much of his time to figuring out the enigma, a warm hand is splayed over his hip and a chin is resting on his shoulder from behind. A little handsy for a nameless stranger, but Louis is tipsy enough that it feels like reclining into a relaxing sliver of the sun.

“Did you know,” a familiar voice rumbles in his ear, “that hair gets really quite _sticky_ when you put honey in it?”

Louis can’t help it, he giggles. The fingers holding his hip are warm and the voice ghosting over his ear is equally so, deep like hard whiskey that makes Louis go from six to midnight in his pants. He swivels around in Harry’s grip and focuses on how green his eyes are, like a lake in the summer. The kind of eyes to bathe in, he thinks.

“Looks like the curls survived,” Louis says, carding his fingers through his locks. They’re silky smooth and thick in his grip, and Louis holds on like the strands are handlebars keeping him balanced from toppling gracefully to the floor. He doesn’t remember being that sturdy, that confident in his own skin as a freshman as Harry is with the way he crowds in Louis' space and stares him down. He hid behind laughter and putting chickens into the bathroom and Zayn’s protective wing.

“Just barely,” Harry says. There’s always a tiny curl to his lips, an upward tug that makes him look like he’s perpetually pleased—or perpetually plotting—and Louis feels the strong, drunken urge to trace the line of his mouth with his tongue that common sense holds back. “And you wouldn’t like me if I was bald.”

“How shallow do you think I am?” Louis scoffs. _A Part of Your World_ is now smoothly transitioning into _Hakuna Matata_ , and something in the melody makes Louis’ hips shake. Harry watches the movements like he’s being hypnotized.

“Actually, I don’t know much about you at all,” Harry admits, somewhat sadly. Louis tips his chin up with his knuckle and smiles.

“You talk awfully slowly,” is what Louis’ mind finds best to say, giggling all the while. Harry seems to find it endearing rather than obnoxious. “ _Very_ slowly for such a faster thinker.”

“Fast thinker, eh?” Harry says. His hips are reflections of Louis’, moving in slow, snapping rhythms that don’t mesh with the music but seem to match the beat of his heart in his ears. He’s definitely had enough to drink, and just as Harry tries to pull the cup from his hand, he swats him away.

“ _Underage drinking_ ,” Louis says through a gasp. “No, Harold.”

“Just trying to help balance you out, love,” Harry says. Louis tries not to focus on the way his lips move, the way he just called him _love_ and the way his entire body mirrors Louis’ intoxicated swaying. He wonders if Zayn managed to pull his pants down successfully, and then, if Harry still has his box of hidden sex secrets under his bed. His ears burn, like they’re blushing bright red under his fringe.

“You’re trying to get secrets outta me,” Louis slurs. Harry’s taller than him, and his shoulders are broader, and his hands are bigger, which is all in all unfair considering that Louis has a two year advantage on him. “Foil my next prank.”

“I’m actually trying to dance with you,” Harry says through an illegal grin. Truly illegal grin. His other hand slides over Louis’ right hip, curling over the fabric over his jeans and guiding his waist to move with his. It’s as intoxicating as the alcohol is to have Harry pull Louis close and stare right into his eyes like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be looking, completely mesmerized with the way Louis’ eyes are dilated and his breath smells like margarita and alcohol.

“So wooing me to get secrets,” Louis clarifies, eyes narrowed even as he loops his arms around Harry’s neck. He’s not any better.

“Just wooing, maybe,” Harry whispers. Louis barely hears him over the pounding of the music, so he sticks to reading lips. “Think I could see your phone?”

“Why not,” Louis says, digging into his back pocket and handing it over.

Five hours later, when Louis only remembers blues of shaking hips and soft curls brushing against his temple, he can think of multiple reasons of _why not_.

\--

Louis wakes up at four a.m. in a random hallway that is surely not his own, spine twisted around itself like a pretzel and mouth dry as sand. He goes to sit up, and as if on cue, his brain starts the drilling of its own private construction site that makes him want to black out until the debris is swept out of his skull. Oh, the throb. He’s never drinking again.

“Zayn,” he hollers out into the echoing hallway despite the protests of his aching head. Nobody responds, like Louis’ the butt of some cruel practical joke where the entire party has left him abandoned in a random hallway to fend for himself like a thirsty man in a desert. Not funny.

_Practical joke_ , Louis thinks, mind flitting back to his last solid memory. Harry Styles, grinding against his hips and turning him on like a light switch before disappearing in the crowd to get drinks and never return. Practical joke not so far off, probably.

Louis grumbles to the hallway, waiting for the walls to agree with his plight as he fumbles for his phone, and there’s the first sign that he’s been conned. His lock screen is no longer the picture he screencapped of his sisters Skyping with him, it’s of himself practically spider monkeyed on Harry Styles’ backside while he downs a shot of tequila and Harry grins at the camera. The fact that this picture exists is already giving Louis the horrible feeling that many similar pictures will soon be advertised around the dorm for his own personal embarrassment to bathe in, and he's stuck between cursing Harry for tricking him and cursing himself for foolishly fraternizing with the enemy. Fraternizing would probably be an understatement, though, considering Harry saw his hard-on valiantly attempt to burst from his pants all night while they danced. Rookie mistake.

“Lovely,” Louis drawls, voice like sandpaper as he opens his phone and starts looking desperately for Zayn’s name to call and demand answers from. He’s lying in a hallway with toilet paper taped to his forehead without another soul in sight, and instead of finding _Zayn_ dutifully awaiting him in his contacts, he sees something else entirely.

“The fuck?”

There they are, his trusty contacts. Taken straight from Harry Potter’s address book, the names _Dumbledore_ and _Snape_ and _Hagrid_ and _Rita Skeeter_. He could fucking kill Harry Styles. Why did he think he could ever trust a freshman with a wicked grin and a history of trouble with the words "can I see your phone." Louis should be glad Candy Crush hasn't been deleted from his phone after spending the better part of his life trying to beat level sixty-seven.

He calls six people—Justin Finch-Fletchley, Dolores Umbridge, Cedric Diggory, Ludo Bagman, Minister of Magic, and Dobby the House Elf—before he finally recognizes Zayn’s heavy drunken accent on the other end of the line asking him where the fuck he is and if he’s been driven over by a car yet. Louis is no longer amused and severely hungover.

“Take me home, Mad-Eye Moody,” Louis murmurs, thoroughly exhausted, and lays himself out as road kill in the hallway for Zayn to find.

\--

_Slowly add all four eggs, one at a time, to gently beaten frosting_.

“Hmm,” Louis murmurs, carefully considering the importance of such slow-moving instructions in the frosting recipe he has open on his cell phone propped up against the egg carton. “Fuck it.”

He pours in all four eggs at once. He’s a college student; he doesn’t have time for egg-by-egg cooking. He has an essay to be written upstairs and a test to cram for on Friday, all things which must stand in line behind his major priority of pranking Harry Styles. The frosting seems to survive the impatience as Louis continues to whip up the sugary substance into something properly eatable.

“Please tell me you’re making cupcakes,” Zayn says by the doorway, nearly salivating at the sight. Louis grins, the type of grin he can feel the evil in, and shakes his head.

“It’s for Harry. He won’t know what hit him,” Louis says through a conspiratorial whisper.

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” Zayn says. He has a tiny smile on his lips, like he knows something Louis doesn’t, which unnerves Louis even more than his brand name shampoos and rhinoceros snoring. “Maybe you should just pull his pigtails and call it a day.”

“I don’t like your tone,” Louis says instantly, eyebrows furrowed. Zayn is still fixing him with that same curious look—fond and indulgent and endlessly amused, and Louis would be smearing frosting down his face by now to wipe the all-knowing smirk off his face if he wasn’t sure he needed it all to make this prank go off without a hitch.

“Sorry,” Zayn says, sidling up next to him and not looking sorry in the least. “Fill me in on the details.”

\--

Nobody can deny cake in the wintertime. Cake in boxes wrapped up in post office tape is like the Holy Grail for dorm rooms after spending weeks on end digesting nothing but twenty cent ramen noodles and sniffing leftovers for potential mold spores, especially when it’s homemade, or even better, mother-made. Louis’ annual box of cinnamon muffins sent by his mother every January always magically evaporate from his box within three days even though Louis only touches one or two and hides the box under the dresser. People swarm to homemade pastries. Like vultures.

So that’s why Louis knows perfectly well that Harry won’t deny his neatly wrapped box of mischief, no matter how suspicious or shady it may be that a random frosted pastry has appeared magically on his doorstep without a return address. Louis is fully relying on the undeniable facts that college students are weak and senseless when it comes to baked goods, an assumption that has never failed him in the past, to make sure his prank works.

He and Zayn are harmlessly hanging garlands in the hallway when Harry notices the box courtesy of Nick Grimshaw, who spotted what was clearly a dessert package and instantly took the opportunity to knock on his door and demand he share his loot. And, like vultures, heads started poking out doors the second Harry emerged to inspect the box and open it for the entire hall to stare at. There it is, no note of love or aluminum foil keeping the cake from spoiling, nothing but a blob of frosting that could have been smeared on by the shaky hands of a toddler, and yet the entire hallway still _ooh_ s and _aaah_ s. Louis is practically giddy as the scene unfolds.

“Somebody give the man a knife,” Niall yells, looking ready to bib himself and dig in without any invitations necessary. A knife is produced, and like magic had orchestrated the tomfoolery itself, Harry leans over his box and digs in the sharp tip of the knife without a moment’s hesitation. A second later, Harry is covered in icing.

The hallway bursts into laughter the second the realization that Harry has just been expertly duped processes everybody’s brains, but nobody more loudly than Louis, who has to stuff garland in his mouth to control the giggles. It was no more than a poorly frosted balloon taped to a cardboard box, and still, Harry hadn’t suspected a thing. He clutches at Zayn’s sleeve for support and watches as Harry slowly breaks into a grin and wipes white dollops of frosting from his eyes. He looks good enough to eat like this, Louis has to admit, with cream exploded over his face and down his neck and dotted in his hair, the type that would take hours to torturously lick away, and apparently Louis isn’t the only one to think so.

Nick leans over to Harry and yanks him over by the sleeve, and as if in slow motion, sticks his tongue out of his mouth and licks a slow, deliberate line of frosting off his cheek. Harry blushes crimson under his sugary make-up, Louis’ neighbors start up the unnecessary cat-calls and whistling, and Louis is furious. This prank is meant to embarrass Harry Styles silly and leave him furiously scrubbing shortening out of his curls for hours on end, not an open offer for Nick Grimshaw to sexually exploit him. An unwritten prank code has been crossed.

“Tasty,” is all Nick has to say, dragging his finger down Harry’s nose and taking his time licking it clean. It looks R-rated and Louis has the urge to grab a handkerchief and starts cleaning Harry’s cheeks off before more handsy people start coming up to lick Harry spotless with their tongues, an urge that he reels in and replaces with a strongly set jaw that is no longer amused.

“You got me, Lou,” Harry speaks up, grinning at him across the hall in his face thoroughly coated in creamy frosting. He looks genuinely impressed and amused to be the butt of a joke, and Louis wonders if Harry’s next prank is an attempt to kill him with kindness and blindingly white smiles as his tongue darts out of his mouth and licks the icing off his top lip.

“Ball’s in your court, Styles,” Louis says, voice a tiny bit hoarse as he watches Harry lick off his thumb. Harry ducks out of sight into his room a moment later to holler for Ed to grab a towel, and Louis takes the opportunity to glare at Nick Grimshaw. Nick just bursts into a fresh batch of chuckles, which Louis personally takes offense to.

As a man who sends his frenemies exploding cakes, Grimshaw should be on his fucking toes. 

\--

_Never let your enemy see your weaknesses_ , Louis is pretty sure he read somewhere, so having Harry walk into the bathroom when Louis has toothpaste foaming down his lip and his hair looks like it’s starting a revolt against his scalp and he’s wearing the fuzzy bathrobe he reserves for only truly chilly winter mornings is not exactly the best thing that could ever happen to him.

“Morning,” Harry says, perfectly chipper as he slips inside the bathroom, and Louis would have pegged Harry as one of those brats who wouldn’t wake up until noon and then cling onto the mattress when dragged from the sheets, just like he is, but Harry is up bright and early combing his fingers through his curls without a single bag under his eye.

“Didn’t see you there, mate,” Louis garbles around his toothbrush. Harry is only wearing his pajama bottoms and a shirt so thin Louis’ eyes can follow the exact curve of his nipples through his fabric, and Louis feels a mouthful of toothpaste slip past his lips into the sink.

He should be angry, dammit. He should see Harry and feel instant rage inside his bones that fuels his desire for creative revenge, since this is the boy who upturned a bucket of water on his head and put rotting shrimp in his curtain rod, but all he sees is how fit he is under his flimsy pajamas. Louis should really get his head in the game.

“You seem to have a fixation with getting me sticky,” Harry says through a grin. Louis briefly chokes around his toothbrush, waiting desperately for Harry to elaborate. “First the honey, then the icing? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d want me to shave my head.”

Louis shakes his head, watching as Harry scratches at the root of his hair and fluffs the bouncy strands curled around his ear. He has nice hair, and Louis has vague memories of running his hands through it back during the party that he’d like to reenact given the chance. Minus the inebriation, though. 

“Just scare you out of your wits.”

Harry grins. He looks perpetually amused, like none of this is phasing him, and instead of urging Louis to give up it just pushes him that much harder to find the thing that makes Harry Styles break and wave the white flag of surrender. He’s worried he’ll have to scrape the bottom of the barrel where his truly cruel last resort lies—calling Harry’s family and sneaking dirt from them on what animals Harry’s petrified of or what his hidden weaknesses are. Zayn won’t approve of such back-alley tactics.

“Hey, about that,” Harry says, leaning his hip against the counter and surveying Louis up and down. Louis thinks right about now is the right time to spit and rinse and clean the bubbles off his chin, so he quickly ducks under the sink and resurfaces a moment later. “I was hoping we could lay off on the pranks for the holidays. Christmas spirit and all that, y’know. I’d like to drink my eggnog without wondering if there’s expired milk in it.”

He holds out his hand, a conciliatory gesture that Louis glances at carefully. He could go easily with a peaceful Christmas, nothing but watching cheesy holiday specials in Claymation on TV for a while, but he’s not sure how on earth to treat Harry when he’s not treating him like an enemy on the opposite side of a fierce battlefront. He knows how to behave when he’s hiding behind the pranks and the amped up rivalry, but all of that taken away, Harry nothing but a real person without ulterior motives, Louis is slightly concerned that things will ravel out of control, mostly because he’s concerned that Harry will turn out to be a genuinely lovely person with a nice voice and a face that’s easy on the eyes and a wicked sense of humor if his pranks are anything to go by.

But despite his better judgment, Louis folds and takes Harry’s hand. They shake like lifelong friends running as opposite political candidates, firm and professional, and Harry slips away faster than Louis would’ve liked.

“But right after Christmas, I’m back to Jell-Oing your homework,” Louis says with a cheeky wink. Harry grins.

“You got it.”

\--

All of Louis’ worst fears are realized when, two days into their truce, Louis learns exactly how cool Harry Styles actually is.

He’s stumbling downstairs wrapped up in his comforter trailing behind him like the train of a wedding dress the first day of Christmas holiday, most of the dorm cleared out with students eager to fly home and spend time away from schoolwork and cramped dorm rooms before any major snowstorms hits, when he smells it: _gingerbread_.

It’s a heavenly scent, and Louis almost closes his eyes and takes a nap right there outside of the kitchen so he can dream of sugarplum fairies and Christmas morning, but he has to investigate before the smell of baking wafts away and he misses out on all of the decorating. Louis can practically see his sisters struggling to stand on their tiptoes as they ice clumsy buttons and lopsided smiles on their fat little gingerbread cookies in his mind's eye, showing off the results a few minutes later with wide grins on their faces that always turns into photographs hung on the mantle. Louis rounds the corner and is met with the fateful baker. Harry.

“Gingerbread,” Louis says faintly. Harry looks up from the stove, and there’s an apron tied around his waist and a picturesque smudge of flour on his cheek that looks like something that should be in the middle of a Martha Stewart holiday magazine. All that’s missing is the Santa cookie jar in the corner and the little children in reindeer sweaters crowded around his ankles. “Please tell me you need help decorating.”

“Always,” Harry says, looking only mildly surprised at Louis’ willingness to interact with him without cracking an egg on his head. Louis very much wants to help, if only to imprint the smell of freshly baked gingerbread into his nostrils forever and see how much he can judge of Harry’s character based off the way he ices the cookies. “I never know how to dress them anyway.”

“Like honorable men,” Louis says, and grabs the icing bag from him to hover over the cookie sheets. The cookies look perfect by not being perfect—with crooked legs and oval heads, and Louis practically sees personalities in each of them.

“That one looks like Niall,” Harry says, pointing to one on the bottom left of the cookie sheet and somehow managing to voice Louis’ exact thoughts.

“Holy shit,” Louis says. “We’ll make them into everybody here at the dorm.”

“Brilliant,” Harry says, staring at Louis with big eyes that look almost enamored with his endless flow of creativity. “Will you do me?”

“I’ll do you good,” Louis says in return without missing a beat or a single stutter, a feat he personally feels he deserves three medals and a statue erected in his honor for.

\--

“This is really weird, guys.”

Niall is staring over Harry and Louis sitting side by side on the ratty couch like he’s watching the world go under—first the birds drop dead, then the hurricanes attack the Midwest, and then Harry and Louis spend time together and even manage to eat from the same popcorn bowl in total peace—and is wondering if he should dare to step any closer. He’s looking at them like they’re a viral STD contained to the couch, and he happens to be right in front of the TV, so Louis can’t focus on watching the Grinch deny human contact.

“Would you mind moving your ginormous behind from the TV, mate,” Louis says, patting Niall’s hip until he edges a few feet away. He gives no mind to the rest of his comments.

“Why are you hanging out together?” Niall says, still on edge.

“We’re just watching a Christmas special together,” Louis dismisses hotly. Harry chooses that moment to sling an arm around his shoulder and squeeze him into his side.

“Besides, Louis here is a great pal,” Harry says. “We decorated cookies together.”

“You decorated cookies,” Niall echoes. “So underneath all those pranks you guys are secretly besties or what?”

“No,” Louis is quick to correct, because this is getting a little out of control. “We are worsties. This is a _temporary truce_.”

Niall doesn’t seem to buy it, maybe because Louis is still tucked under Harry’s arm and Harry’s hand is kneading a tiny massage into his shoulder, but he doesn’t ask more questions. He’s been brilliantly trained, Louis thinks, as Niall shrugs it off as a ghostly encounter and sits on the floor between their legs to watch the second half of _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ with them.

\--

“I can top that. I used to put food coloring in my sister Gemma’s leave-in conditioner.”

Louis doesn’t know how this happened. Just two hours ago, he was staring at his ceiling plagued with the same pre-Christmas insomnia that attacked him as a child and encouraged him to stay up all night under the Christmas tree instead of sleeping soundly in his bed, thinking about going downstairs for a nightcap or some leftovers tucked into the fridge, and now he’s sitting in a dark kitchen eclipsed in two a.m. shadows licking homemade chocolate pudding off his spoon with Harry sitting across from him doing the same. This wasn’t exactly how he planned for this to happen.

“So that’s where that prank on Zayn came from?” Louis whispers. Anything louder feels like it'll breach the tranquility of the night. “You know, he’s never going to forgive you for that.”

“He wrapped all my homework in Saran wrap, I think we’re even.”

Louis tries to remember how he specifically ended up here with Harry. What had turned into an attempt to nick the carton of milk claimed solely by Niall via the large angry Sharpie marks of possession all over the side for a warm cup of milk had rapidly disintegrated into Harry popping up through the dark with bedhead and a bandana wrapped around his head offering to help make a nighttime snack, and now here they are, digging handmade pudding that isn't even too clumpy out of their bowls and swapping prank stories like they’re lifelong buddies. Louis isn’t sure he’s fine with this truce so much anymore.

“I used to put lifesavers in the shower head.”

“I used to put baby powder in my sister’s hair dryer.”

“I used to take out my sisters’ mattresses and pour water into the bedframe and cover it with a sheet,” Louis shares when it’s his turn, grinning into his bowl at the memory. There’s nothing but scrapes of pudding left, so he sticks his nose in the bowl and licks it clean the same way that always drove his mother up the wall. The tiny pleasures of life at university. “Watching them fall into that water was always priceless.”

Harry laughs, and when Louis looks up he’s licking his spoon free in a way that shouldn’t be as distracting to Louis as it is. There’s that thing that Harry does again, the way he makes Louis feel effortlessly funny no matter if he’s sending him exploding cake or telling him childhood stories. It’s nice, nice in a way that sets a fire of pleasant warmth in Louis’ belly.

“You know, I never got the chance to tell you,” Harry says. Louis misses the first half of his sentence lost noticing how pretty the moon looks licking up Harry’s cheeks, just a few rays of white ghostly light that illuminates the right hemisphere of his face and highlights his cheekbones. “I wish I would have been here two years ago to see the time you put the chickens in here. It sounds awesome.”

“You know about that?”

“Well, _yeah_ ,” Harry says, like Louis’ modesty is just for show. “I’ve lost count of how many times Niall’s pissed himself telling me about it.”

“ _Niall_? The one who’s scared shitless of birds is laughing over the time a chicken chased him down the hallway?”

Harry grins, shrugging, sticking another mouthful of pudding in his mouth. He eats as slowly as he talks, with deliberate bites that he savors in his mouth and seems to let his taste buds meticulously memorize. “I guess your pranks just have that effect on people,” he says. “I wish I would’ve been there to help.”

“To help?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, looking up at Louis from his spoon. For the first time, he looks sheepish, like he’s wary of Louis’ opinion. “The two of us, we could do some damage together.”

“You’re right,” Louis says. Zayn would be smacking him upside the head right now if he could overhear all this talk of replacing him as Louis’ right-hand man, but Harry’s right, and it makes Louis wonder why they’ve been working on opposite sides for half a year when they could have been joining forces. Harry’s brilliant, with ideas that Louis could only hope to dream of and a tremendous sense of humor that isn’t deflated even when there’s cake sliding from his forehead, and Louis thinks they would make a fine pair. “Styles, you’re not trying to get my guard down, are you?”

“Never,” Harry says, and they have a few seconds of unbroken eye contact that runs through Louis like a bolt of lightning prickling at his fingertips. It must be the dairy so late at night, he thinks, or the lack of sleep, but then Harry’s eyes are flicking down to Louis’ mouth and it looks like he very much wants to kiss him right here, over the pudding bowls and through the shadows. Louis realizes he wants it to happen, wants to know what his lips feel like and if they’re sticky with chocolate pudding or soft and demanding and if Harry likes to bite.

“Well,” Harry says, his voice breaking the silence and causing Louis to realize that his eyes are closed, as if expectant. He jerks them open, straightening up as he watches Harry ruffle a hand through his hair and collect their bowls to dump into the sink. “I guess I should be off to bed.”

“…right,” Louis says, still trying to compose himself. Harry disappears up the stairs faster than if Death himself was on his heels, the tails of his bandana scarf flapping after him and leaving Louis sitting there alone and wide awake. No more chocolate pudding after bed.

“What the fuck just happened?” he asks the walls desperately, but they don’t have the decency to respond.

\--

The day after Christmas, Louis makes sure that Harry wakes up to the surprise of freshly fallen snow, the post-holiday blues, and his underwear collection strung across the roof by a clothesline for the entire street to see.

Louis may’ve honored their temporary truce like a gentleman, but intermission is over.

\--

“New Year’s Eve in a dormitory!” Louis hollers jovially to the answering shout of many drunken flatmates, saluting each and every one of them with the bottle of champagne he discovered under the sink. Of course there’s a strict rule of no alcohol in the dorm in place, and of course this bottle isn’t Louis’, and of course nobody here is drunk. He’s prepared.

“Could be worse,” Zayn says, slinging an arm around Louis’ shoulder as he holds out four expectant champagne glasses balanced between his fingers. “I could’ve gone home and you would’ve been left here all alone with nothing to do but bake brownies in your Snuggie.”

“We’ll still be baking brownies,” Louis winks, and pops the bottle. Bubbles go running down his arm as the bottle explodes with a celebratory bang, the entire lounge once more cheering into the air at the sound of the party getting started.

He has to admit, with all of their shit of hogging the bathroom and making spills on the stove, his dormitory roommates are pretty tolerable, especially with a few extra ounces of alcohol in them. Olly’s in the kitchen next to him in the middle of throwing together a bowl of punch elusively named as “purple stuff” that is guaranteed to get stronger as the night goes on, and who the hell needs the New York City or the beach getting high in the back of a Jeep when Louis has Zayn plastered on his side and his entire dorm about to get drunk off their asses. Nick comes strutting down the stairs with his boom box in hand, which earns another round of cheering from the lounge, and Louis is ready to get pretty stinking drunk.

“Remember what happened the last time you were wasted?” Zayn casually reminds him as Louis peers over Olly’s shoulder in the punch bowl. “I found you in fetal position in a hallway muttering about Harry Potter characters.”

“Thanks, mummy,” Louis says with a pat to Zayn’s cheek. “But I have to build up my resistance somehow.”

“I’m keeping my eye on you.”

“Just keep ‘em south of the equator and we’ll be fine, Malik,” Louis says, pouring the champagne and taking a generous swig from the bottle himself. “Next year is going to be the _best year ever_!”

\--

The next year is going to fucking suck.

Watching Nick Grimshaw try to grind up against Harry while a remix of _Auld Lang Syne_ plays over the speakers set up on top of the fridge and the television isn’t exactly what Louis would call a great way to start the new year. On a list of things he'd rather be doing is: prancing naked through a mosquito infested field, eating salmonella diseased chicken, and mucking out a manure pile in brand new Keds.

He’s not going to make resolutions, not when he knows he’ll break them and end up disappointing himself when he doesn’t learn Mandarin Chinese or how to make Greek salad by the time next December rolls around in the blink of an eye. He’s too busy wallowing in the lack of success he suffered the last twelve months even without a list of resolutions to bring himself to create ones for the future anyway, as he digs himself into the armchair with a bottle of beer and tries to ignore that Niall is in the process of making a homemade bong in the yard that will surely attract the attention of the police and end their party prematurely.

He really envies Harry, Louis thinks, not because he has Nick attached to him by the hip trying to crunk with him, but because he’s sure of himself. He’s nineteen and he’s already a solid person, with solid ideas and solid opinions and what happens to be great hair. He’s a freshman and he’s already past all the experimentation and existential crises that come with college, and Louis wishes he could stop thinking about how what Harry would look like masturbating or how many people _do_ already know because they’re been there front and center, but his brain doesn’t seem to have an off switch.

Louis is gay, he knows this. He may not have had a coming out party or makes a point of putting his sexual orientation on his nametags, but everybody _knows_. He likes dicks and the burn of stubble against his chin, and he also happens to like curly brown hair and tall legs that go on for miles. He’s fucked.

Somebody whistles loudly in his direction, and Louis turns his head just enough to see Zayn strutting in his direction and sliding onto the armrest. Louis fixes him with a look that he hopes accurately encompasses all the disappointment, regret, and self-loathing he’s currently feeling into one expression. Zayn pats him on the fringe.

“Drowning your troubles in alcohol?” Zayn asks with a knowing grin.

“I’ve done nothing of worth this year,” Louis laments theatrically. “Except for maybe that one time, when I made eggs sunny side up. That was special.”

In front of him, Nick is trying to woo Harry into a drunken foxtrot that Louis finds no amusement in. Wasn’t alcohol supposed to make him numb to feelings? He opts for his plan B, which is stuffing his face into the armchair cushions and pretending to ignore the deafening noise of people banging pots and pans together as midnight ticks closer. Louis doesn’t know who came up with the idea of handing out noisemakers, but it’s turned the entire dormitory from well-behaved adults into six-year-olds with trumpets.

“You know, you could just go up and ask him to dance,” Zayn mentions, poking him in the neck. “Or do you expect a matchmaker to come floating down from the sky and start throwing candy hearts?”

Louis furrows his eyebrows at him and contorts his face into something that does little to properly intimidate Zayn into retracting his statement.

“What are you implying?” Louis asks. His crush is top secret, top secret information. “It’s like you think I’m moping.”

“You are,” Zayn says, then raps his knuckle against Louis’ beer bottle to encourage him to finish it off. “Maybe if you drink more you’ll realize it too.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Louis says hotly. “Can’t a man just sit back and admire a man’s chest from afar?”

It sounds perfectly logical in his head, so he wonders why it comes out sounding like homoerotic denial when it leaves his tongue. Zayn is snorting, but Louis does a tremendous job of ignoring him in favor of focusing on worthier subjects, like the way Harry’s shirt dips. His v-neck is deep again, deep enough for Louis to be hypnotized by the curve of his chest and the occasional slip of nipple that appears when he dances too fast, and Louis feels like he should have some sort of rebuttal up his sleeve after being forced to watch Nick attempt to start a mating ritual with Harry in the middle of the dorm. After all, isn’t that what they do? Give and take, eye-for-an-eye, revenge at its finest.

“Hey Zayn,” Louis pipes up, staring up at where Zayn is leaning against the armrest of his chair and prodding him in the side. “Will you kiss me at midnight?”

“That sounds like a terrible idea,” Zayn deadpans, and then a moment later, “all right.”

They wait out the next four and a half minutes in silence until the countdown begins, the atmosphere electric enough to even perk up Louis from his slump of retrospective depression. The dorm starts slurring numbers in unison, a garbled ten, then a louder nine, then a roared eight…

“Do you think it’s true that what you’re doing at midnight you do all year?” Louis asks as he pulls Zayn down into his lap and curls his hand around his neck.

“God, I hope not,” Zayn says, and then leans in to kiss him.

It’s a little wet, which Louis realizes is probably his own fault, and very loud, so loud that all the shouting is making Louis want to plug his ears while he sticks his tongue in Zayn’s mouth. It’s so unromantic and brotherly and sodden with the taste of cheap beer that Louis is positive it will never, ever happen again. They pull away from each other, and the look on Zayn’s face completely mirrors his thoughts.

“I give it an eight point five,” Louis says after a moment’s consideration. “Points off for sketchy tongue work.”

“Sketchy tongue work?” Zayn parrots incredulously. “If you’re trying to score more face time with me, Tomlinson—”

Their conversation is interrupted by the crash of a broken glass hitting the floor, their first casualty of the evening, and when Louis looks up Harry is staring at them through the kerfuffle of screaming and enthusiastic midnight make outs. He looks surprised, and hurt, like someone’s taken the trampoline out from under him, and promptly turns around to push through the people and disappear out of sight. His reaction somehow manages to both shock Louis and confirm his suspicions, and neither emotion is particularly comforting as he watches Harry’s back vanish through the throng of excited partygoers.

“I’m going to wake up with so much more than just purple dye in my hair tomorrow,” Zayn grumbles, peeling himself off Louis’ lap. “I hope it was worth it.”

Instead, he and Louis wake up on the floor eight hours later, bodies coiled in unnatural twists, eyes as dry as sand, and what feels like last night’s dinner and drinks bubbling in their esophagus, with a line of red solo cups filled to the brim outlining their bodies. Louis knocks over three in his attempt to delicately sit up and spends the next five minutes doing little to stop the spread of the puddle as his pants soak up what he can only hope is nothing more than water and attempt to enjoy the first day of the new year.

He supposes he deserves this.

\--

“What the fuck is this?”

“An intervention.”

Yes, Louis can read the scribbled sign hanging over the curtain rod quite well, thank you very much. There’s Zayn, cross-legged on the floor and face uncharacteristically stern as he eyes Louis with the gaze of a law-abiding no-nonsense teacher who’s sick of Louis drawing explicit pornography on the student desks. Louis honestly has no idea what on earth Zayn would have to make an intermission about considering that he’s a perfectly lovely roommate who never leaves dirty underwear lying around and repeatedly brings up food for Zayn’s pleasure whenever he wanders down to the kitchen. He’s a doll.

“Beg your pardon?”

Zayn pulls a box into view. He’s brought _props_. Louis doesn’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed with his attention to detail. Zayn holds a lumpy toothpaste tube under Louis’ nose.

“See my toothpaste?” Zayn asks slowly. Louis is a little concerned for his sanity as he inspects the perfectly harmless half-used tube. Last he remembers, he wasn’t in charge of restocking the dental hygiene products. “Guess what isn’t in it. _Toothpaste_. Guess what’s in it instead. _Orajel_.”

“That stuff that numbs your mouth.”

“Exactly,” Zayn looks livid as he yanks the toothpaste out of Louis’ grip and promptly replaces it with his alarm clock. “See this clock? What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s six hours ahead.”

“I ran all the way to my evening class this afternoon, positive I was late to my test and the professor would kick me out on my ass, with no clue that I was five hours early,” he snatches the clock back and goes elbow deep yet again into his box of endless anger, which Louis is slightly worried is going to take up his entire evening.

“All right, all right, I get the point.”

“Do you?” Zayn asks. He looks like he’s reached the end of his usually very long rope, like his underwear dyed bright marshmallow pink is what’s next to be pulled out of the box and stuck accusatorily under Louis’ face. He knows who’s responsible, can smell his work a mile away, and has no idea how this involves himself. “This playground chasing has gone on long enough, all right? I played along because I know you needed an enabler and you wanted to play second graders with a crush, but the next thing to be sacrificed in this prank war is my sanity, and you know it won’t be pretty.”

Louis blinks, slowly trying to process everything after _playground chasing_.

“So what you’re saying is…”

“Find some way to tell Harry you fancy him that doesn’t involve shaving cream or Saran wrap or birds of fucking prey loose in the dormitory,” Zayn howls. He looks furious, like a child stuck between two divorced parents who’s sick of the nonsense and the beating around the bush. Louis is slightly offended, but there’s a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that’s telling him he should be thanking Zayn. Zayn calms down a smidgen a moment later, taking a deep breath and patting Louis on the shoulder. “Look, I’ll always be your partner in crime. I’ll turn this dorm into a setting for a natural disaster if you want to. But not because you want to impress a freshman who’s already into you anyway.”

“You’re giving me a lot to process here,” Louis says. He feels like if he had a tie, he’d be loosening it by this point. The room definitely feels a little hotter than before with Zayn exposing all of his hidden truths out on the floor to be seen and stomped on by parts of Louis that Louis hadn’t even wanted to share his feelings with. Of course he likes Harry, who wouldn’t like Harry? He’s funny and charming and too sweet for his own good. He just hadn’t realized that his prank war had been a disguise for all of that.

“You’re a big boy,” Zayn says easily. Louis looks from Zayn, to his box of props, to the hanging _intervention_ sign strung from the window that looks like it’s been made out of toilet paper. Louis wonders if he really has crossed a line, if all of it was really that bad that it merited an intervention. Zayn’s always been a bit of a drama queen.

“What exactly do you want me to do now?” Louis asks, feeling a little naked. It’s like Christmas all over again, wondering how on earth he’s supposed to talk to and interact with and treat Harry without all the rivalry to butter over their relationship. Zayn shrugs.

“Just sit and think for a while.”

That much he can do.

\--

_Sitting and thinking for a while_ turns into buying three snow cones off of the whistling vendor set up by the science labs even though the air still has a brisk wintertime nip to it, leaving Louis with a blue tongue and even bluer fingers as he devours his third icy treat alongside his feelings on a bench in the quad while watching happy couples skip past him. Okay, nobody’s actually skipping. They’re still annoying.

Louis starts wondering if the novelty of pranks is a temporary thing, like the way a tomato is only ripe for so long or a bike rusts after one winter. Nothing quite like riding a new bike down a sidewalk feeling like Zeus riding a lightning bolt to freedom, but then the wheels start squeaking and the brakes stick and it’s over. Meant to be enjoyed while it lasts, then looked back on with wrinkly smiles. It’s a little depressing.

He thinks about what Zayn would say, how he’d slap Louis straight in the face and tell him that there’s no such thing as pranks expiring their novelty, how he’d tell Louis to man up and go find Harry to apologize about the honey in his air. He sits a little bit longer, finishing off his snow cone even as his teeth chatter and scrolling aimlessly through his phone. There’s still a picture of him and Harry at a party that he had no idea was even being taken, the one where he’s clinging onto him like seaweed wrapped around a passing ankle. Harry never printed it out a hundred times over to hang up on random mailboxes like Louis expected.

“You look cold.”

Louis looks up from his phone and his half-eaten snow cone where Harry is standing, pigeon-toed and grinning, next to his bench with a coat wrapped around his chest. The coat looks heavenly, the kind of thing that could revive his freezing fingers before he loses them to the cold, and Louis offers him a bite of his snow cone if only to give himself a chance to warm up. Harry takes it from him and dips in tongue first.

“Just needed some alone time,” Louis says, realizing a second later it sounds like he’s shooing Harry away. He doesn’t want him gone, not when looking him straight in his eyes seems like the most clarity he’s had all week, and gratefully Harry doesn’t take his words as his cue to leave.

“A fella doesn’t just eat three snow cones on a good day,” Harry teases. “You need some cheering up?”

“Am I gonna end up in a crack den or a ball pen that’s been vomited in if I say yes?”

Harry laughs, a bright noise that feels like it’s splitting the clouds apart.

“No. I have a great place we could go.”

Louis thinks about how he should probably sit and mull things over a bit longer, marinate in his emotions like Zayn told him to do, but then thinks fuck that and fuck brooding on a campus bench with a blue tongue. He’s had enough pina colada ice shavings to last him a lifetime, and he could go for a peaceful afternoon in Harry’s company, which is probably what Zayn wanted all along. Of course he’s worried about hanging out with him without the mask of a prankster to slip behind, but he thinks it’ll be like Christmas, where both of them ended up frosting hats and jackets onto gingerbread men together without having to think twice about it. With some people, it just works, no small talk and decorum necessary.

A fifteen minute walk across campus later, Louis is holding an armful of bunnies and feeling his troubles melt away as their twitching noses bury into his elbows and their tiny pom-pom tails wobble. Louis feels like he’d give away government secrets right now with two cinnamon-colored bunnies snuggling into his hands and nosing into his palm for sweets, and that might have been the point all along.

“So, did I lie?” Harry grins across the bunny play pen. There’s a bunny as white as snow on his shoulder and another wiggling in the pouch his palms make, and it’s so adorable Louis would almost think about putting his bunnies down to take a picture. Almost. “Isn’t this great?”

“D’you think if I climb in here and become one with the bunnies they’ll let me stay here overnight?” Louis asks. The bunny’s nose is tiny and fidgety as it smells the pads of his fingers, and Louis thinks it might have magical powers. He can’t even remember failing his last economics test or his own conflicting emotions anymore. All he remembers are bunnies and soft, soft fur. He holds the pet up to his cheek and stares at Harry. “Do we look related?”

Harry’s cheeks burn pink at the sight. “Cute as a bunny.”

“Who?”

“ _You_ ,” Harry says like it’s obvious, rolling his eyes, and Louis feels his own cheeks heat up.

The bunny with the unruly brown hair in his right hand—named Liam by Louis the moment he picked him up and recognized a familiar grandfatherly yet energetic spirit in him—nudges Louis in the elbow with his tiny feet. They’re too cute to ignore, and suddenly Louis is blurting out, “I’m not into Zayn.”

“…what?”

“Zayn—Zayn and I,” Louis says, and quickly smoothes down his fringe where he knows his hairline is burning bright red. “We’re not together. Just… thought you ought to know.”

“Oh,” Harry says quietly. His lips form a tiny _o_ , nothing but a soft pink curve that Louis would kiss if he wasn’t in the middle of nuzzling two very affectionate bunnies, and then he smiles. It feels like a private smile, the sort that’s meant only for Louis. “Nick’s a really bad dancer.”

His smile gets a little wider, and Louis feels his entire face heat up when he sees Harry looking at him from under his lashes. It feels like he knew all along and is now just playing dumb for Louis’ sake. Outwitted by a freshman, like the bucket of water is happening all over again. Louis should stop watching YouTube videos of miracle puppies and start actually feeding his brain wisdom.

“Thought he might be,” Louis says, staring right into his bunny’s eyes. Its nose twitches.

“All righty then,” Harry says, letting his white-haired pal jump off his shoulder back into the pen. “Ready to see the turtles?”

\--

“Awfully brazen of you to return to the scene of the crime.”

“Nice to see you too, Ed. Is Harry around?”

Ed gives Louis a suspicious once-over, like he’s expecting him to have a food fight at the ready in his back pocket the second he turns his back. Louis doesn’t blame him considering all the times Ed’s gotten caught in the crossfire of his and Harry’s prank duels. Louis should send him a basket of cookies one of these days, not that he’d trust them enough to actually eat them.

Ed turns around nonetheless and hollers for Harry to come greet Trouble at the doorstep, and Harry rounds the corner a moment later. He smirks when he sees Louis, like he’s ready for the next challenge. This time, Louis doesn’t have one.

“Got more exploding pastries to deliver?” Harry says with a cheeky grin. Louis shows him his empty defenseless hands. “What a shame.”

“Actually… I’m here to settle our armistice,” Louis says. “High time the adults started handling things like grown-ups. Plus Zayn can’t take living in fear anymore.”

Harry chuckles. “Sounds fine to me. Gentleman’s agreement, yeah?”

He extends his hand, all broad and diplomatic, and Louis shakes it. It’s longer this time than it was in the bathroom, a solid acknowledgement that there aren’t any winners or losers. Except for maybe Ed, who was targeted on accident a little too many times.

“Truce, then,” Louis says. He has to admit, it was fun while it lasted. It was like being a spy mixed with an assassin mixed with a conman all bundled into one package plus one brilliant partner in crime and many, many snack breaks. He wouldn’t trade the pictures in his phone of Zayn’s purple hair as he flips him the bird for taking photos for anything.

“Truce,” Harry echoes. He squeezes Louis’ hand when he tries to pull away. “I never got a chance to thank you.”

“Thank me?”

“Yeah. For basically giving me the best freshman year I could’ve hoped for,” Harry says through a dimpled smile. He looks so genuinely thankful that Louis ever put cake in his hair and strung his underwear out in the freezing cold for everybody and their mothers to see, and Louis isn’t sure what to say.

“You—I gave you the best freshman year you could’ve ever hoped for?”

“Yeah. Maybe next year we can work together,” and he sounds so sincere, so hopeful that they’ll team up forces like they never did this year, that Louis can’t deny him.

So he surges up and kisses him.

It takes Harry by surprise—a personal victory for Louis that he still has that element of surprise in his pocket—but only for a second before he pulls Louis in by the nape of the neck and lets loose a deliciously raw growl of want that makes Louis kiss him harder. He’s breathless in a second, all his pent up emotions twisting inside his stomach like a whirlwind, and he pulls away a moment later when Harry’s thumb brushes over his cheek to stare at him in awe. 

“You kept me waiting long enough,” Harry murmurs with a quirky smile, and Louis rolls his eyes and leans in to kiss him again.

He has to stand on tiptoes to reach him properly, momentarily cursing his height up to the point that Harry wraps his hands around his hips and picks him up into his arms like he’s not much more than a feather’s weight, at which point Louis starts wondering if his small frame is in actuality a blessing in disguise. Harry’s hands are firm on his ass and his thighs, guiding his legs around his waist as their mouths push together insistently. Harry’s tongue flits over the seam of Louis’ lip, requesting entrance that Louis grants him a moment later to deepen the kiss. He feels like high school all over again, how a tiny make out session with have his entire body thrumming with need and brimming with a skyrocketing heart rate.

Harry backs him up against the doorframe and Louis wraps his legs around his broad hips, feeling their bodies flush together while his hands set sail memorizing every curve and divet in his back. Harry responds to all of his touches tenfold, with tiny whimpers and moans that Louis wants to bottle up to replay over and over again later, Harry’s kissing strong and demanding just like he suspected. His mouth takes prisoners and leaves no mercy, teeth grazing over Louis’ lower lip and tilting their heads together just right. They fit well, bodies slotting together as Harry kneads at his ass and Louis touches the curls that survived substance after substance thrown at them. Still soft.

“Woah! Take that shit indoors before it ends up on YouTube!” Niall groans the second he steps into the hallway, and Louis resurfaces from what feels like three hours swimming under the ocean. Harry’s lips are swollen pink, not a look that’s encouraging Louis to control himself, so he cocks his head to the inside of Harry’s room and presses a few open-mouthed kisses on his neck as motivation.

“Sorry, Nialler,” Harry calls gleefully, letting Louis slip off his waist and back to the floor and promptly shutting the door before Niall’s yelling attracts more onlookers. Louis wastes no time—they’ve wasted enough already—sliding a hand up his t-shirt to flit over his stomach and tugging him onto his bed that he knows from countless hours of snooping and pranking is Harry’s.

“Clear out, Ed,” Louis says over Harry’s shoulder. Harry is crawling on top of his sheets like a predator—the same look he gave Louis in the hallway months ago, and if that thought won’t send him to early orgasm he doesn’t know what will—and he has no interest in having an audience. “Zayn has soda he’ll gladly share with—mmm, jesus fuck.”

Ed leaves, but not before flicking Harry in the back of the head and flipping them off and closing the door behind him, and Louis’ just glad they didn’t stumble into his room, or they’d be the butt of condom jokes and Zayn’s endless laughter right about now. He pulls Harry on top of him, all endless limbs and broad shoulders, and brushes his nose up against Harry’s slight stubble. Everything about Harry feels like a revelation he’s earned out of patience, from the way his slender fingers squeeze his forearms to the way his tongue darts out to lick over his lips. Louis is gone for.

“Thought you’d make a move during the party,” Harry says breathlessly. He sounds hoarse and ecstatic, and Louis wonders if he can make his voice go even raspier. “But then you passed out.”

“Wait,” Louis says while Harry sucks a mark that’s sure to bruise in a few hours onto his jugular. “The New Years’ party? When I kissed Zayn?”

“No, the first one,” Harry clarifies. “Really nothing between you and Zayn?”

“Nothing,” Louis manages to get out through a moan, pulling at Harry’s shirt until he obediently raises his hands and lets him slide it off his shoulders. This is better than deep v-necks, his chest on total display for Louis to worship and map out with his tongue. His skin is meant to be revered, Louis thinks, and he thinks the next time he sends Harry exploding cakes he’ll make sure he’s shirtless if only to give himself the opportunity of licking icing off his abdomen. He pushes Harry onto his back, mind already busy taking mental snapshots of Harry breathless and undone on his sheets while Louis straddles him and licks salty stripes down his stomach. Harry’s groans are like chunks of honey and whiskey solidified, hoarse and pleasured, and his hands reach down to tug at Louis’ feathery hair.

“God, you and that _mouth_ ,” Harry groans, head lolling over to his pillow. Louis would return the compliment if he wasn’t otherwise occupied throwing his own shirt into the ethers to land on top of a lampshade and wrestling with the button on Harry’s pants. Zayn was right, he’s done chasing Harry on the playground and stealing his lunchbox.

“You want me to use it?” Louis teases, arching his eyebrows as he shimmies Harry’s pants down his legs. “Nice to see you managed to get your underwear back.”

“Think you’ll still be laughing when I have you in my mouth?” Harry murmurs from the top of the bed, and just when Louis’ busy picturing Harry’s lips trailing down his chest Harry grabs the upper hand, flipping Louis underneath him and caging him in with his arms, leaning down to kiss him almost reverently. He kisses Louis like Louis is a precious thing to be gently wooed and then fucked hard, and Louis feels himself strain against his pants as Harry slips his tongue into his mouth. He knows just how to kiss, just how to thrill Louis like his lips are sending electrical shocks through his body, and Louis gives as good as he gets by arching up into his kisses and grinding his hips into Harry’s erection.

Harry moans lowly, breaking their kiss to trace his thumb over Louis’ cheek and slip his pants down to his ankles a moment later. Louis kicks them off like the burdensome garments of clothing they are, shaking his legs free of his boxers a moment later to speed things along. He’ll take his time learning Harry’s body after he makes him come hard and dirty as soon as physically possible, since after all, he has months to explore and discover all the parts of Harry’s body he loves the most and make him moan the loudest. Right now he really needs to come down Harry’s throat.

“You want me to?” Harry asks, breath hot over Louis’ chin as he glances down at Louis’ naked body. He spreads his legs in invitation and nods, watching as Harry curses and slithers down his legs like he’s found the Holy Grail. Every touch to Louis’ body is slow and deliberate, and Louis can’t tell whether he’s teasing or simply fascinated, and Louis whines into the air and bucks his hips upward for attention. Harry notices and wraps his hand around his length as he takes the tip of him into his mouth.

It’s almost too much stimulation too fast, Louis thinks. He doesn’t think the human body was built to properly handle Harry Styles’ long fingers alongside Harry’s Styles’ wet mouth when they’re combined into one lethal duo, a duo designed purely to torture Louis and drive him slowly insane. His toes curl as Harry lets his tongue flick to the underside of his cock, tasting the skin there while his hand pumps steadily at the base, every part of his body multitasking to give Louis as much pleasure as possible, and when Louis looks down and sees Harry kneeling between the V of his hips with his dick sliding in and out of his mouth, Louis feels his common sense run away and leave him bonelessly stupid.

“Oh god,” slips from his lips as Harry speeds up the licks and sucks of his tongue, the way that his mouth suctions around his dick pulling tiny moans from Louis’ mouth. His free hand is massaging circles into his hipbone, every single touch magnified like Louis’ nerves are on fire. His ears are just as hypersensitive, completely aware of every soft noise Harry makes when he hums around his cock or his lips slide up and down on the slickening skin of his erection. It’s good, really good, making Louis claw at the pillow and wonder when Harry ever got the chance to learn how to give such a fantastic blowjob because he definitely won’t be able to compete when he returns the favor.

“Thought about you like this for so long,” Harry whispers, slipping off Louis’ dick and reveling in Louis’ answering whine. “Panting and groaning for me. It’s even better now that it’s real.”

“You drive me mad,” is Louis’ breathless response. Harry laughs, and he’s not sure there’s supposed to be laughter during sex, but it works for them and loosens his muscles even more until he’s nothing but foldable putty in Harry’s hands, which work their magic brushing over Louis’ balls and the puckered entrance of his hole before returning to their task of jerking Louis off slowly and steadily. It’s somehow infinitely better than his own hand because it’s new and foreign, his palm alternating pressure as he squeezes and pumps and proceeds to kitten lick over the head of his cock until Louis’ almost sobbing into Harry’s pillow.

He comes a moment later, and it feels like a train ramming into his chest or a wrecking ball of an orgasm that hits him by complete and utter surprise, and by the time he can successfully blink the black splotches and stars from his eyes, Harry’s petting his hips and smirking at him from between his legs. He looks much too smug for his own good, so Louis musters up his remaining strength that hasn’t been sucked out of his body through his dick and leans down to palm Harry through his boxers.

He’s big in his hands, warm and hard and aching for touching, so Louis takes pity and slides his hand into his underwear to wrap his fingers around him and stroke. The warm weight in his hand is already arousing enough, but it’s Harry’s face that makes Louis bite his lip and plant soft kisses down his chest, the way his eyes flutter closed and his lips fall open and his breathing increases. Louis wants this to be the best handjob Harry’s ever gotten, better than what he could ever do for himself on a quiet night when Ed’s not in the room to overhear, and gently twists his wrist and slides his thumb over where precome is dotting the head of his dick.

There’s so many things he wants to do to Harry, as he murmurs so on Harry’s chest, like spread him out and kiss him for hours until he’s boneless and panting, or push up his knees and slide into him and fuck him into another dimension, or wrap his legs around Harry’s waist as he returns the favor, or lick over his hole and find his prostate with his fingers until he’s a writhing mess. He wants to take Harry apart in a way a few pranks never could, wants to see him lose control and beg for more and then, flip Louis onto his back and do the exact same to him. He can’t fucking wait.

“You’re—god, Harry,” Louis breathes out, unable to come up with a proper adjective as he watches Harry moan and pant into his grip. He speeds up his hand, pumping his cock until the precome slides his way and makes it smooth and slick, Louis trying desperately to memorize the way Harry bites his lip and curls his toes and his hips stutter into Louis’ grip as he strokes him.

Harry comes quickly, spilling into Louis’ hand and crying out before his teeth pin his lower lip down and mute the sounds, Louis brushing his thumb over Harry’s chin and kissing up his neck all the while. It’s a neck made for kissing, so he does until Harry pulls him up his chest and pushes their mouths together in a hot, breathless slide of their lips. The kiss is warm and says things like _thank you_ and _we’re doing that again_ and _this is the best truce ever_.

“I have a four p.m. class,” Harry murmurs on Louis’ collarbone after they pull away to breathe. Louis pushes at his chest until his head’s cushioned on his pillow and all thoughts of stress and class have been pulled from his mind.

“Skip it,” Louis says, hooking a leg over his hip and ghosting his fingers up his bare chest. “I’m not done with you.”

Harry’s pulse skyrockets a bit from where Louis is listening to it beat against his ear, and Louis grins in satisfaction. He’s found a way to ultimately trump Harry Styles, and he won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.

But for now, he’s taking a nap on his chest.

\--

Harry and Louis’ relationship stays a deliciously kept secret for approximately two hours after Louis finally resurfaces from Harry’s bed, when he wanders back into his room to ask Zayn if he wants to order some Chinese and split some teriyaki noodles with him and Zayn appears to not have heard a word he says, instead distracted by Louis’ neck.

“Nice hickey,” Zayn finally says, not sounding the least bit mortified or shocked. A little shock would have been nice. “And that’s not your jumper.”

Louis looks down where he’s currently swimming in a red knitted sweater he was positive had been his when he’d slipped it over his head, and right by where the collar is dipped low over his chest is a smattering of purpled mouth-shaped bruises. Damn. Subtlety is not going to be their strong suit.

“Thank fucking god,” Zayn breathes through a theatric sigh before Louis can start spilling details or explanations. “If I had to plan one more prank against Harry Styles, I would’ve teamed up with him and started pranking you.”

“Actually,” Louis says, rearranging Harry’s jumper so not all of his possessive bite marks are on display for the world to feast on anymore. Taking it off isn’t really an option. “How would you feel about teaming up with Harry anyway?”

Zayn looks at him.

\--

“All right, boys. We have to plan this one just right.”

“How do you know they’re all gonna come out at the same time?”

“They will. Me and Harry have this in the bag.”

“All right, all right, get your ammo at the ready.”

Louis catches Harry’s eye over Niall’s ducked head from where they’re hiding behind the handmade cardboard shield propped up at the end of the hallway, all of them squashed together like sardines to avoid a foot being seen out in the open and compromising the entire operation. Louis had been skeptical about the strength of cardboard being able to handle the job, but he’s been reassured multiple times that with the reinforcement of duct tape it’ll withstand any rebuttal attacks and manage to hold itself up without all of them precariously holding onto it.

It has to be _just right_. Louis isn’t much of a perfectionist, but Niall happens to be, and he’s been rubbing off on them enough to convince them all that this should be much more than a half-assed practical joke meant to evoke a few chuckles out of the dorm. It should go down in history. It should be epic.

“Heads down, fellas,” Harry whispers to all of them so they curl against the cardboard in turtle position like they’re in the middle of a tornado drill. 

They really do make a great team. Louis doesn’t know why he never considered it, too busy forming alliances and picking players for his team to recognize the potential of joining forces. He’s pretty sure wars could end with this sort of mindset, the one that power is not only stronger in numbers, but so is fun. They all bring something to the table—Zayn, a quick wit and an ability to scheme and plot that nobody expects from such a quiet and mysterious face, Niall, the talent of laughing at absolutely anything while paying rapt attention to detail, Harry, a brilliant mind that runs deep and endless into a pit of mischief, and Louis, who watches over all of them and doesn’t give up until every single person he’s come into contact with has fallen victim to one of his classic pranks. Together, they’re unstoppable.

Louis takes this opportunity to pass out shower caps, sliding his own delicately over his own hair while Niall inspects the package like he’s been given a condom in the middle of a detective investigation.

“Protect those magical blond hairs, Niall,” Louis tells him, stuffing the strands behind his ear into the safety of his crinkly cap. Zayn follows suit, then Harry, and finally, Niall, after a very confused shake of his head. Louis thinks he’s secretly impressed by Louis’ ability to think of everything.

“Get the audio ready, Zayn,” Harry stage-whispers, and then everything’s settled into place. Louis grips water balloons in both his hands hard enough for them to pop over his pants, face twisted into the fierce expression of a warrior about to run headlong into battle with an aluminum foil sword. The boys all exchange nods of go-aheads and green lights. Zayn does his magic.

He holds his iPod high over his head and presses play, and there comes the blaringly deafening noise of a fire alarm from the enhanced speakers attached to the bottom, loud and convincing and enough to start a dutiful stampede to the entrance. The first head emerges from his room, popping into the hallway like a jack-in-the-box cranked into the air. It’s Liam.

“Is there a fire?” he asks the hallway at large, as if waiting for somebody downstairs to start wailing about false alarms and dinner accidentally getting a little smoky. It’s the perfect time.

“ _Now_!” Louis yells, in a voice like a coronel charging his army, and four heads pop up from their duct tape barrier on cue to hurl water balloons directly at Liam’s head. They pop into explosions of water as they break on his knee, his chest, his elbow, and suddenly eight more curious heads appear, one with the intention of hustling down the stairs and out the door before the nonexistent fire kills them all, right before they all restock their ammo and throw a fresh batch of balloons and stop everybody in their tracks.

It’s like magic, like explosive, watery, well-plotted magic. The balloons break on chests, on hairdos, on noses, on ankles, and suddenly the entire dorm is shrieking and ducking for cover and throwing the unpopped balloons back into their cardboard fort. It’s anarchy of the best kind, and it makes Louis feel free and happy because for once he’s pranking just for the sake of pranking, just for the sake of watching a balloon pop right on Nick Grimshaw’s ass, just for the sake of laughter.

Next to him, Harry is laughing just as hard, raw and unfiltered just like Zayn and Niall are as they pitch balloons into the sopping crowd ducking behind doors and friends, and Louis thinks that things couldn’t have gone any better.

But they’ll all still have to find a way to top themselves next year.


End file.
